Contact

THE STUDY SOCIETY

NEWSLETTER

who am I ?

THE STILL POINT . T S ELIOT OUSPENSKY MEETS THE DERVISHES ISTANBUL 1920 FALLING IN LOVE WITH RUMI VIEW FROM MOUNT ATHOS 3 TRANSCENDENT RELATIONSHIPS SAINT JOHN INNER MIRACLES
No. 62 Autumn 2013
F REE
TO MEMBERS , OR

5.00

Contact
The Study Society Newsletter
SILENCE
Along the city streets It is still high tide, Yet the garrulous waves of life Shrink and divide With a thousand incidents Vexed and debated: This is the hour for which we waited This is the ultimate hour When life is justied. The seas of experience That were so broad and deep So immediate and steep, Are suddenly still. You may say what you will, At such peace I am terried. There is nothing else beside. T S Eliot (1910)

Cover: Konya Graffiti by Kuf. Photo: Richard Beal

C ONTENTS
3. 8. On the Doorstep of the Absolute A View from Athos Fiona Stuart Robin Amis Anon. Richard Beal Gerald Beckwith E.T. P. D. Ouspensky Richard Stevens Prof. William Tiller Ed. S&M Network Review Diary & Events

10. Notes on the Gospel of St John 13. The Dark Elephant in the Universe 13. Elephant or Element? 15. A Singular Planet 17. Ouspensky Meets the Whirling Dervishes 22. Falling in Love with Rumi 25. Three Relationships of Humans 29. Obituary Alison Gordon 31. Book Reviews 4 Page INSERT

ON THE DOORSTEP OF THE ABSOLUTE

Perhaps T S Eliots most well-known reference to the Hindu religion (inspired by the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) comes in What the Thunder Said, part V of The Waste Land. But what of Burnt Norton, a poem whose conception he once described as a solitary experiment? There are treasures to be discovered here references to both Eastern and Western spiritual teachings that not only illuminate Eliots search for the divine but light our own journey, too. There are some readers who... regard Asiatic literature as the sole repository of religious understanding; there are others who... refuse to venture further than a narrow Christian tradition. For both kinds of reader, it is salutary to learn that the Truth... is not wholly confined to their own religious tradition, or on the other hand to an alien culture and religion... (From TSEs Preface to Thoughts for Meditation, 1952) I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility. (T S Eliot in The Unity of European Culture, a radio broadcast to Germany, 1946) THE HARVARD YEARS In 1910, just before his graduation, 21-year old Thomas Stearns Eliot was walking along a busy city street when he experienced a moment out of time. He makes reference to it in Silence2, a poem written that same year, but only published 86 years later, in 1996.

Using imagery of the ocean, he describes how, at high tide, when the streets are swelling with the garrulous waves of life, the seas so broad and deep are suddenly stilled. It is a moment when life is justified, yet the peace that comes with it terrifies Eliot because: There is nothing else beside. Years later, in The Listener (19 December, 1946), he writes of the kind of unexplainable experience which many of us have had, once or twice in our lives, and been unable to put into words. And while such a moment could be said to come as a gift of grace, intellect, in understanding it, cant be neglected ... the coordination of thought and feeling, he writes in 1929 to the Sanskrit scholar and Anglo-Catholic, Paul Elmer More, seems to me what is needed.3 You may call it communion with the Divine, or you may call it temporary crystallisation of the mind. Such phenomena can be judged only by their fruits.4 In 1911, Eliot was in his first post-graduate year and electing to study Sanskrit and Indic philology; among the texts he explored were the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, a work that for him was the next greatest philosophical poem5 to Dantes Divine Comedy. The following year he progressed to learning Pali and studied Buddhist philosophy under Masaharu Anesaki, a leading Japanese intellectual, scholar and practising Nicheren Buddhist. Anesaki gave lectures on the Lotus Sutras, noticeably drawing links between Buddhist and Christian doctrines and these, together with his adherence to spiritual unity through diversity, must

have impacted on the mind of the young Eliot. Also influential was Anesakis Buddhist teachings of the Mahayana Middle Way, the path by which ignorance, the clinging to worldly phenomena, is destroyed and sunyata (emptiness/void), the enlightened state of nonattachment, is realised. Eliot describes sunyata this way the crudest experience and the abstrusest theory end in identity, and this identity I call the Absolute. You can call it nothing. I will not dispute the point. But... it is both beginning and end.6 Echoes of the Middle Way are to be found in the metaphysical writings of the British idealist philosopher, F H Bradley, to whose essay, Appearance and Reality (1893), Eliot was drawn in 1913. For Bradley, the means by which the gap between worldly experience and the Absolute could be closed was religion, though the harmony, he suggested, was already present: There is truth in every idea however false, there is reality in every existence however slight; and where we can point to reality or truth, there is the one undivided life of the Absolute. (Appearance and Reality, p.487) RELIGION AND CULTURE In 1913, the year before he left Harvard to take up a travelling fellowship in Europe, Eliot wrote that his studies in Eastern philosophy and literature had brought about a state of enlightened mystication.7 Interestingly, he was also giving serious consideration to becoming a Buddhist this as late as 1922 but hesitated over a point of culture. For Eliot, religion provided a society with a cultural structure, so giving meaning and support to peoples lives. In 1927, he chose to be baptised and confirmed into the Church of England and in that same year became a British citizen. Anglo-Catholicism, he wrote to Paul Elmore More in 1929, filled the void that I find in the middle of all human happiness and all human relations. And he had begun, he added, a long journey afoot.8 Eliot believed that it was only through following a particular religion or philosophy that the higher states of spiritual awareness could be reached. Yet perhaps in an echo of Anesakis teaching of unity through diversity, he also maintained that it was through such practice that the insights of other spiritual traditions could be understood. ...from a philosophical point of view it is impossible to pursue that there can be division in True Knowledge. In True Knowledge there is no division. If there is manifestation of some division you have to look in yourself. (HH Shantanand Saraswati, Record, 24 February, 1985)

BURNT NORTON a solitary experiment9 In 1934, Eliot and his friend, Emily Hale, walked through the neglected grounds of Burnt Norton, a then unoccupied manor house in Gloucestershire. Its gardens, and in particular the rose arbour and the dried pool, were to provide strong images for the poem. Written the following year, its allusive spiritual references share the company of a White Rabbit, a pack of Tarot cards and the London Underground. It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves. (T S Eliot, from Knowledge and Experience, 1916) All the differentiation of time and space which we calculate in this world is the illusion. In the Atman or Brahman, there is no time, there is no space, its all one. We see a distorted effect of all this in our worldly consciousness or sleep. The differentiation of time is illusion, for it is... always different, because it is illusion. (HH Record, 19 October, 1962) So why did Eliot refer to Burnt Norton as an experiment? A possible explanation appears in a letter written in 1930 to William Force Stead, the Anglican chaplain of Worcester College, Oxford. Here Eliot refers to what he perceives to be a serious and unexplored area, one that exists between modern poetrys usual subjects and devotional verse. It is the experience of man in search of God and trying to explain to himself his intenser feelings in terms of the divine goal . . .10 We know that Eliot had already experienced moments of unity. But the task he was taking on in Burnt Norton wouldnt be easy. Here he eloquently describes the inadequacy of memory when it comes to recapturing just such an experience: I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where, And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. (BN II) TIME AND ALL IS ALWAYS NOW The poems opening 10 lines are from fragments abandoned during the production of Eliots play, Murder in the Cathedral, lines that contemplate eternity and the nature of time: Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past...

(BN I)

There are two Christian influences suggested here. The first comes from St Augustines Confessions XI: ...Eternity, ever still-standing, neither past nor to come, uttereth the times past and to come. And the second is from Dantes Divine Comedy. In Paradiso, Canto XVII, lines 1718: on that point gazing still that in one Now doth all our times enfold. Moving into part II of the poem, Eliot refers to the enchainment of past and future, of how they are woven into our weak physical selves, so allowing but a little consciousness. And here one might think of Lakshmans dive in the Ramayana, and of how easily we can become lost in attachment to our small selves and lives. Burnt Norton concludes with what could be taken as a veiled reminder to wake up to what is real: Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.

(BN V) In referring to Ouspenskys line of time, Dr Roles explains: Before _____________ Now _____________ After

Its a most mysterious line anyway. It begins nowhere and ends nowhere. Its changing every moment as every moment Now comes from the future into the past. There is nothing real about that line anyway and yet the whole of life, in the Western world anyway, is geared to it. Its natural that, physically, we (like all three-dimensional bodies on the earths surface) should be governed physically according to the movements of the earth and the moon. So our clocks and our calendars are the best that mankind has been able to do to have one single time for everybody which is, of course, highly essential... But as Mr Ouspensky pointed out, Newtons law of gravitation governs only three-dimensional bodies solid bodies it shouldnt govern the mind which has no mass and no other characteristics of solidity. And yet our minds are weighed down and governed by gravity along with our bodies. Meditation, as the Maharishi pointed out when he first gave it to us, is a way of escaping from gravity. Freeing the mind from what doesnt belong to it so that it can be geared to the natural clocks which are everywhere in the human organism, physical and psychological. ...this line of Before, Now, After, is in apparent movement, isnt it? Our senses tell us that the phenomenal world is moving all the time like a

sound-track or a film. That movement, as I said, applies to bodies to three-dimensional things. To an observer with a still mind there really would be no such movement at all. The mind can be perfectly still in the middle of doing things. So the movement is fictitious and the light is shining like the sun all the time. (Papers of Dr F C Roles, September 29, 1980) Returning to the poem what of stillness and movement in Burnt Norton? Few would be unfamiliar with these lines: At the still point of the turning world... at the still point, there the dance is... (BN II) But many might be surprised by its inspiration, part Christian/part occult. It came, Eliot says11, from The Greater Trumps, a novel written by one of his close friends, the writer and Oxford theologian, Charles Williams. The plot centres on an ancient pack of Tarot cards and a set of mysterious, tiny Tarot figures; in perpetual motion, their ordered dance is magnetised by, and vibrating to the movements of the earth. Just one figure, The Fool, remains motionless, poised at the centre of the dance, or so this appears to the human characters in the novel. All except one. For Sybil, a woman who radiates Universal Love (You can only give it back to itself, she says), The Fool is always in movement, filling the spaces between the turning figures and so fulfilling the dance. And similarly, while her family and acquaintances are buffeted about in the storm of their desires, Sybil remains detached, her presence eventually bringing the novel to a calm conclusion. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. (BN II)

It is also quite possible that inspiration for the still point was drawn from Eliots knowledge of Hindu scriptures: In the Vedas it says of Brahman: Before the beginning of time the Absolute existed alone so His desire was to create many. The motive force which manifests the whole of creation is love or bliss. All the galaxies, stars, planets, creatures and everything else are set in motion by this conscious force of love. Every morsel of creation is part of the Creator, and everything plays its part according to the measure of the conscious charge which animates it. This Leela (play) is for the pleasure and satisfaction of the Absolute, taking place with Him and within Him, but while the drama is being played out some of the players forget their parts. They forget it is the Absolute who is powering the whole drama and superimpose their own preferences, their own limiting conditions, upon it. Then, love for one thing in particular turns into hate for something else. All limitations are governed by limitations of time, space and quality the gunas and through ignorance these limitations become hard, binding and complex. Then, only true knowledge, love and devotion can dissolve them for in simplicity the troubles arising from complexity disappear. (HH, Record, 31 December, 1992) And limitations have meaning for Eliot, too. Love, he says, is unmoving and without desires: Except in the aspect of time Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being. (BN V) Also in part V comes an echo of the poets 1933 description of sunyata: And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now. SPACE Heart of Light Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. (BN I)

The opening chapter of Alice in Wonderland was the source for the entry into the rose garden12. Remember how the White Rabbit, so absorbed in his own world, hurries along, muttering, Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I shall be too late. Trapped in time again. And we, just as a dream-like Alice, pursue the footsteps down a passage into Eliots part physical/part psychological garden. Here he describes a visionary experience; as he stands looking down into a dry, concrete pool it becomes filled with water out of sunlight: And the lotus rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light... (BN I) The lotus, the sacred flower in Hinduism, is a symbol of non-attachment, an opening up to the divine truth. One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus is untouched by water. (Bhagavad Gita, 5:10). In Buddhism it represents purity of body, mind and speech a purification which leads to spiritual awakening. And using the play on the word rose, we are presented with a flower whose five petals in Medieval Christianity represent the five wounds of Christ. Here is the rose, Wherein the word divine was made incarnate. (Beatrice to Dante in Paradiso, Canto XXIII). Could this symbolism be for us, too, as a moment in Meditation, when the heart opens like a flower? In the city of Brahman is a secret dwelling, the lotus of the heart. Within this dwelling is a space and within that space is the fulfillment of our desires. What is within that space should be longed for and realised. As great as the infinite space beyond is the space within the lotus of the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained in that inner space, both fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and stars. Whether we know it in this world or know it not, everything is contained in that inner space. (Chandogya Upanishad, Ch. VIII 1.1/1.3) Alas, for Eliot the moment of enlightenment passes and with it comes the rueful remark that humankind Cannot bear very much reality. (BN I)

SPACE Internal darkness Writing to his older brother Henry, Eliot revealed that part III, beginning Here is a place of disaffection is set in the Gloucester Road tube station.13 From 1925 until 1965, Eliot worked as literary editor and later as a director at Faber & Faber, his daily journey taking him by tube from Gloucester Road station to Fabers offices in Russell Square. This is the subterranean world of the commuter, the world that moves on its metalled ways. And how familiar the poet would have been with the strained time-ridden faces of its inhabitants, each Distracted from distraction by distraction. One wonders what Eliot might make of todays consuming commuter distraction: the iPhone. But this world of darkness, deprivation and solitude where we descend lower is also the world of Dantes Inferno. In Canto IV, lines 10-II, Virgil urges the poet to descend to the Underworld. It is a dire abyss where infinite Despairing cries converge with thundering sound. Cloudy it was, and deep, and dark as night. Another influence in this struggling abyss comes from the 16th century Spanish mystic, Carmelite friar and Catholic saint, St John of the Cross, whose writings, Dark Night of the Soul and Ascent of Mount Carmel, meant much to Eliot. These lines reflect the via negativa (see also East Coker III): To come to be what you are not you must go by a way in which you are not... And when you come to the possession of the all you must possess it without wanting anything. Because if you desire to have something in all your treasure in God is not purely your all. (Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, Ch. 13) And here, in the abyss, we also have a reflection of the neti-neti of Hinduism, this in a Vedic mantra from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which Eliot knew well: Lead me from the unreal to the Real; Lead me from darkness to light; Lead me from death to immortality. And falling into darkness is to fall into the realm of thoughts and desires, a world removed from the light: Whenever we wake up and find that we are travelling towards the darkness of the past or future, please come into the light of the day the light of the present. (HH Record, 28 October, 1977)

SELVES My words echo thus in your mind T S Eliots words not only echo, they enlighten. And the more one reads, the more one understands. This extract, from Degrees of Reality, his unpublished manuscript of 1913, seems to make for an appropriate conclusion: The token that a philosophy is true is, I think, the fact that it brings us to the exact point from which we started. We shall be enriched, I trust, by our experiences on the Grand Tour, but we shall not have been allowed to convey any material treasures through the Custom House. And the wisdom which we shall have acquired will not be part of the argument which brings us to the conclusion: it is not part of the book, but is written in pencil on the fly-leaf. Fiona Stuart NOTES

1909-1917, Faber & Faber, 1996 3 Paul Elmer More Collection, Princeton University Archives 4 From TSEs Introduction to Pascals Penses, 1931 5TSE on Dante, from Selected Essays 1917-1932, Faber & Faber, 1932 6TSE, a lecture given in1933 at Virginia University, from After Strange Gods, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1934 7 TSE Degrees of Reality, 1913 (unpublished Harvard manuscript), Kings College Library, Cambridge 8 Paul Elmer More Collection, Princeton University Archives 9 Burnt Norton first appeared as the final poem in Eliots Collected Poems 1909-1935. It was, he wrote in answer to a scholars enquiry, a solitary experiment and at the time he had no plans to follow it up with anything. (Letter 19.1.1949 to William Matchett) It was while he was writing East Coker (completed in 1940) that the inspiration for a quartet of poems came to mind. The Four Quartets was first published in 1943 (New York) and 1944 (London). Eliot saw it as his greatest achievement. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. 10 Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University 11/12 Gardner, H The Composition of the Four Quartets, Faber & Faber, 1978 13 Time Present, newsletter of the T S Eliot Society no. 62, Summer 2007 Suggested Reading T S Eliot Four Quartets, Faber & Faber, paperback, 2001 Gordon, L Eliots Early Years, OUP, 1977 Kramer, K Redeeming Time: T S Eliots Four Quartets, Cowley, 2007 Servotte, H & Grene, E Annotations to T S Eliots Four Quartets, iUniverse.com, 2010 Williams, C The Greater Trumps, Faber & Faber, Paperback, 2011 (originally published 1932)

1 From T S Eliots poem, Spleen, published in January, 1910 2 Silence, published in Inventions of the March Hare: T S Eliot Poems

A View from Athos

This is an extract from Robin Amiss soon to be published book, A View from Athos. It reects the rst impressions of a Western pilgrim to the Holy Mountain and its effect on his inner development. The author also describes a special sense of time where his day becomes totally centered around face-to-face encounters with the elders and the Divine Liturgy. And the book also communicates another critical element of life on Mount Athos its stillness. This extract, describing one of several visits Robin made to the elder, Fr. Paisios, gives a revealing account of the way the hermit taught. 'Exploring the Holy Mountain is exploring oneself.' Robin Amis WHEN WE GOT TO HIS KELLI, Father Paisios was under the veranda, splitting logs. Who is it? he called in Greek. My interpreter told him it was the Englishman who had been to see him twice before. Wait! came the reply. We waited. The gentle blows of an axe splitting wood merged into the silence of the forest. The big machines that are working in some of the Athos forests grumbled far away in the background without spoiling the stillness. A quarter of an hour passed. Should I try again? asked my companion. No, I said, He knows we are here. He will come when he is ready. Only two or three minutes later the old man emerged from the bushes near the gate and passed us the key. We followed him up the path, round the cottage, to the clearing on the far side where, under a tree, were some half-dozen logs upended beside a larger one that served as a table. The old man greeted us, filled mugs with crystal-clear water, left the loukoumi open beside them in traditional Athos hospitality, and disappeared into his home, saying that we had arrived so early that he still had chores to finish. KNOWING THE WILL OF GOD Ten minutes later he joined us again, and we began to talk. Again, as had happened on my previous visit without an interpreter, I learned more in the way of practical lessons than by his words. In essence, I discovered that although his words even now had immense value, it would be better if I had come to him better prepared, after my latest visit to the monasteries and not before, when my mind was still full of the world I had so recently left. I still regret that I did not think clearly enough at this time to follow up what he said as well as I might. I also regretted very much that I had not yet learned Greek; the limitations of translation cause real problems when dealing with things both subtle and

spiritual. Nevertheless, it was a conversation of great value to me and, I suspect, to others living in the West. Jesus tells us, I said at the beginning, that we should not simply call on God, but should do the will of God. If I wished to carry out this commandment, what should I be doing in my everyday life? I think my young interpreter put it slightly differently, because the old man seemed slightly disappointed that this was all I was asking, and I remembered then that he had expected me to return at some future time and ask him one special question. That question is still unasked. However, he answered my current question very well, and in my eyes very much simplified the whole idea of doing the Will of God. It seemed to me that Father Paisios did not talk theory. There was a quality in his advice that eliminated the distance and the imprecision that normally comes between us and important ideas. Thus his words seem to directly link to experience. He showed me quite precisely what was meant by the idea that we should be open to the best impulses that reach us, and also should be deaf to the temptations of our own weaknesses, and of peoples attempts to force us into different directions in our lives. There seems to be an element of conscience in this: of saying what we feel and doing what we say. At the same time, it linked with the idea that to do the will of God we should be ourselves, should learn to express what God had made of us.

Father Paisios

THE JUST MAN In this reconciliation of apparent opposites, as in its reconciliation of the ideas of authority and liberty, this kind of guidance helps to free the mind of its confusing dualities. For example, this different view of doing the will of God has a great power to make life simpler. What do you now do for a living? I was next asked. I told him, and provided additional details he asked for. Is the problem one of honesty? I was asked. It is important to keep to this kind of honesty even though you do not do so well as a result. In this kind of situation, where the Just Man does what is right, what he sees to be right, he may lose at the time, but God makes it up to him. Let me give you an example. A Greek farmer used to visit me. He had four brothers who were lazy and shiftless, but although a simple soul, he himself had cleared and developed a lot of land, and was doing quite well. His brothers saw this and decided to share in his land. He remembered his obligations, and they were able to take the best pieces, the pieces he had developed most fully. Their brother, with the rocky, unproductive land left to him, came to me in great difficulties. I told him it would be alright, that the Lord would make it come out right in the end. I next saw him almost ten years later. How are you doing? I asked him. Very well, he replied, the land I had contained valuable minerals, and I am now a rich man. What should I do? I advised him to help those around him who were poor, and he did this, and built a church, and still was rich. I asked him some time later, how were his brothers: he did not know. They had sold their land and gone off to jobs here and there. So God sees what is right, and sees when a man follows what he knows to be right, follows his own heart and not those who try to make him change, and in the long run He makes it come out right. One must persist in doing what is right, as best one knows, and not take the easy way, not allow people to force us to compromise. The man who does this is the just man, the dikaios. God looks after him. This, doing what was right, was being true to the Spirit. It was not just following the rules of social morality, but doing what the individual knows to be right in his inmost heart, even though others would have one act differently from this. Being true to the spirit depends on conscience; success (as an opposite of hamartia) lies in the expression of that knowing... a very special kind of knowing the simple knowing of the very young child then linked in spontaneity with simple action. The you that has ethos is the you that grows by taking responsibility, and the responsibility it must take is to act on its own ethos and never respond to outside pressures. As soon as it responds to outside pressures, that is not spirit, but passion in the

classical sense in which passion was derived from the same root as passive. According to Origen, it is in knowing this that true sonship lies. The servant has to be told what to do externally. We are told in the Gospel of St. John Ch. 15:15 that: The servants of God know what is in the Fathers mind. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him; even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:12 and 16.) This, self-expression by doing the will of God, is the ultimate behavioural paradox, combining in itself aspects of human character which modern thought regards as mutually contradictory. In resisting Henry VIII, Thomas More sought to be true to the spirit, not simply to defend doctrine. Blind faith is the death of truth, and so it is the negation of true faith. The mysteries of the church do not demand blind faith, although it is easy to imagine that they do. To be in the presence of such a man as Father Paisios somehow restores ones mind to its own best condition, replacing what one has recently absorbed from those around one. This means that, to be true to the Spirit, we need to reflect something that exists within us, not things we have learned from other people. (Although the actions of the saints may show us the way.)
Robin Am is

T HE G UEST H OUSE This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. Rumi
9

JMW Turner 1775-1851 A Mountain Road with a Flock of Sheep and a Figure Seated on a Wall (1798-9) Tate Im ages 2013

Notes on the Gospel of Saint John

Rodney Collin-Smith discovered these notes amongst Ouspenskys papers after his death. He assumed they were written by PDO and published them as such in his Ediciones Sol booklet of 1949. Doubt was then cast on the authorship and it remains uncertain as to whether the author was in fact Ouspensky, or one of his pupils. Maurice Nicoll was another candidate. Whoever it was, clearly had a deep understanding both of Ouspenskys system and of St John. IT TALKS ABOUT NEW FOODS. The rst miracle it relates is the turning of water into wine at the wedding feast. Wine represents New Food not a natural food, but something which has to be made by a very complicated process. Wine is the juice of fruit which is fermented, which means it has taken on a new force from being dead. Water comes naturally, from a spring. Wine has to be made intelligently, by men, for their own use. A whole chapter talks about Bread, Flesh, Blood. ! him, Lord, ever more give us this bread. And Jesus said, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

For the bread of God is he which cometh down from Heaven and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto

The disciples wanted the bread to be given to them. Jesus at once answers: I am the bread. It is something very difficult; they cannot understand. They ask for a gift. Jesus answers: he that cometh to me will never hunger, he that believeth on me shall never thirst. To come means progress, advance step by step. To believe means work to combine Imagination, Reason and Will into a balanced power which will be Faith. Faith is not an emotion. !

10

Verily, verily I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood ye have no life in you... For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. Flesh and blood are new food. Food is another name for Power. We are enclosed inside powers of which we are not conscious. We cannot eat or drink because the faculties with which we could take those powers in and use them are not working. We are like dried up sponges in water. The water cannot soak in and penetrate the sponges because they are dead. Eat the flesh and drink the blood means being made an active living part inside a great force like a red corpuscle in blood, which draws life from the food a man eats and makes new life from it. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him. Dwelleth in me and I in him means being admitted into a new consciousness. !

Jesus said unto them:

light in which our eyes see no colour at all, unless it is broken up for us in a rainbow. Colour is as necessary for the flower as its ordinary food of moisture and warmth. But it uses another faculty to absorb colour. It is a faculty which we have not got at all. The Gospel talks of mechanicalness several times. !

Then said Jesus, I go my way, and ye shall seek me and die in your sins: Whither I go ye cannot come. Die in your sins means in the circle of mechanical thoughts and feelings which enclose us.

Jesus answered, For I know whence I came and whither I go. We do not know whence we came and whither we go. We do not come or go. I am the door of the sheep... By me, if any man enter in he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God... All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. Light is the basis of all life on earth. Vibrations of energy and power travel on light. All material forms are threaded through with it like beads on a string. And the Light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.

St. John gives a new meaning to the word Light.

Sheep represent mechanical people. Shall go in and out means shall be conscious and therefore free. Find pasture means find fresh, growing food. And he said, Therefore said I unto you that no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father. At that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. !

The superficial disciples did not like being told that they were mechanical. They liked to think that they were chosen to be disciples. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? And Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal Life.

Darkness means mechanicalness. Earth is enclosed and enwrapped in a great flame of radiant power. The same power is stored inside every living form, waiting for some shock that will set it free. Comprehend means take in and use. We are Darkness so long as we are mechanical. Life with power flows all round us, but we cannot take it in and use it. Light is Food. Every animal and plant and stone draws in something from light and could not live without it. Colour is food which flowers draw out of a ray of The darkness comprehendeth it not.

The real disciples could never be offended. They knew what they wanted. Their aim filled their minds and drove out all negative objections. Words of eternal life means New Food. The true disciples thought it was so precious that they were prepared to sacrifice their worldly life in order to find it. The Gospel talks of Truth. !

God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

11

Worship in spirit means secretly, inwardly, in thought and feeling. Worship in truth means true with ourselves.

When the spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come. Spirit of truth means no self-deception. The more we try to be true in spirit, secretly, the more chance we have of understanding objective truths. For He shall not speak of himself means he shall no longer be subjective. But whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. He shall hear. It is a new faculty. Their machinery makes the noise they imagine they hear. To hear means three separate efforts combined continuously: First, effort to make silence in ourselves, by stilling the noise made by our imaginings; Second, effort to listen, to become aware of something outside us; Third, effort to take in a new faculty is needed, which will start a new process of thought and feeling. He will show you things to come means the new faculty the conscious man will have acquired will enable him better to understand laws. Jesus says: !

No unrighteousness is in him means no mechanicalness. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except that it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except that ye abide in me. Abide in me means obey your law. The home of the branch is in the vine. It abides there. That is where it is fed and kept alive. If we awake, the whole of our thought and feeling will be in a new sort of conscience. New food will be drawn from it and life will not be able to be parted from it. !

Jesus heals the man who was born blind. No-one recognises him after he is healed. They think he is different another person. Pharisees and Jews come and question him. They ask the wrong sort of question, How was it done? What sort of a man is Jesus? They do not really care. They are inquisitive. The man whom he healed simply says, All I know is, I was blind and now I can see. The result is all that matters. St. John is a poet. He gives new meanings to ordinary words. When he speaks of Wine, Bread, Light, Flesh, Blood, he means Foods New Powers. Food is a key. It is a new force which starts machinery. Food is another name for Power. If we stop for an instant feeding, we die. Innumerable keys turn the wheels which control the circulation of our blood and feed our brain and keep up movement in us continually, which we call life. Our food is light, air, vision, sound and every impression of feeling and sensation drawn from our surroundings. We have an illusion of being active. In reality we depend entirely upon our foods and have no more power in ourselves than a windmill without wind. Self-Remembering is an effort to make new power which will be Food for new faculties, which otherwise are starved. ! !

I can of mine own self do nothing. As I hear, so I judge... and my judgement is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. Jesus directly followed the Will of God. It cannot reach us except through laws. Each person has a law. Our work of selfobservation is simply in order to find out what is our own particular law. No one else can tell us what it is. Jesus says:

He that seeketh the glory that sent him means a man who is trying to wake, in order to follow the law that works through him, apart from his feelings.

He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory, but he that seeketh the glory that sent him, the same is true and no unrighteousness is in him.

One can turn to any source of Higher Mind for a story and learn to see it in depth. The Mathnawi is full of them; and in the Christian Gospels, even more so, there is scarcely a page or a verse which has not got some meaning which can be taken either supercially on the physical level, or as a psychological fact, or on the Causal level as applying to mankind as a whole. You can take your choice in any single instance, and spend a little time each day on something like this which appeals to you just holding it in your mind so that it enters your nature; then you wake in the morning and see a new meaning to it, and this meaning will give you an emotional drive lasting quite some time and not just during a day.

12

Dr Roles 74/15a

The Dark Elephant in the Universe

THERE IS A SAYING about ignoring the elephant in the room, the important point that is too difficult to deal with. We have a similar problem, but in the whole universe. Most of it is missing, we cant see it or detect it; it is a huge dark elephant, but we cannot ignore it. As early as the 1930s it was calculated that rotating galaxies should fly apart, as gravitational forces were inadequate to hold them together. Then in the 1990s it was discovered that the furthest galaxies were increasing their acceleration away from each other, the opposite of what was expected. It became clear that there must be far more matter and energy in the universe than we can observe, and only the forces resulting from that matter can explain what is observed. The missing matter and energy has been named dark matter and dark energy. Current estimates are that only 5% of the universe is made up of normal baryonic matter and energy, in other words atoms and electrons. Of the rest 27% is dark matter and 68% is dark energy. We cant see it, but we deduce it must be there. Although we dont yet know what it is, we do have an increasing list of things that we know it isnt. It isnt normal stars that we can see. It isnt vast dark clouds of normal matter, because although dark, we could detect their presence from their absorption of radiation passing through them. Dark matter isnt antimatter, because we would detect the radiation given off when it meets normal matter. It isnt vast black holes the size of galaxies because we would detect the gravitational lenses that would create. The most likely explanation so far is that there are many Weakly Interacting Massive Particles such as Axions or Neutralinos. Neither has yet been detected. Another possibility is Massive Compact Halo Objects such as neutron stars and brown dwarfs. There have even been attempts to revise Einsteins gravitational theory to explain the observations. As science progresses we may hope one day to understand much more about the wonderful universe we find ourselves in.
Richard Beal

MODERN PHYSICS abandoned the concept of the Ether in the early 20th century but it can be interesting to consider whether that ancient idea bears any relation to the new concept of dark matter and energy. The Sanskrit tattwa (element) of Akasha or Ether is not the same as space. The Nyaya system (often quoted by HH Shantanand Saraswati) says that space has no qualities or attributes and is recognised only as a function of distance and relations between objects, rather than being any particular thing. Even in a vacuum there is energy flux, suggesting that there is a more fundamental level existing beyond the vacuum but which is beyond ordinary perception. This is Akasha. The concept of Akasha is more like an ultimate field of supraphysical reality from which the forms of all material objects arise and it lacks the qualities of all the elements, except sound. Akasha is completely invisible and all pervading. At the human level, the Akasha contains the invisible prana flows, nadi pathways, and chakra transducers that allow the mediation and transmission of energy between the physical and subtle levels. Akasha is traditionally symbolised by a black or dark indigo ovoid or egg, representing the void, and is present not only in the space between heavenly bodies, but also as that element which permeates and upholds all physical forms right down to the atomic level. Silence, stillness and the invisible are the nature of Akasha. The Nyayiks (circa 2nd cent. CE) were the creators of Indian formal logic. It is recorded that during Alexander the Great's campaign in India, Brahmin priests described the entire system of Nyaya logic to the Greek historian Callisthenes, who travelled in Alexander's retinue and who later passed on this system to Aristotle his great uncle. The ether is Akasha which gives form to everything. It is the element which gives space to all things and beings. ... This Akasha comes out of Manas or the Mahat-Tattva. It is at the junction between the inner and outer worlds. HHShantanand Saraswati, 23 September 1968
Gerald Beckwith

Elephant or Element?

13

No-one can hold on to the still point ...

Clay on the potters wheel... Within the spinning lump, whatever form it assumes, is a central point that does not move. Every particle in the vessel and every detail of the form relates to that When I was learning to make bowls on the wheel I was taught to begin each movement by taking the inside hand back repeatedly to the centre of the clay pressure as I shaped the side, allowing the centre to

and working outwards from it, slowly increasing the expand into the whole form. At the time it seemed to meant. It was one way of describing the transition

centre; without it they could not be where they are. Seen from that centre everything is all there equally and at once.

be simply a useful technique and I did not see what it from the still point into the turning world of events in time. No-one can hold on to the still point, but it can expand. Then it remains in the midst of the

Clay turning on the wheel is a universal symbol which relates to every human being, indicating that everything experienced in passing time depends on a

dance, uniting the events of passing time with a centre which is always present. Nothing has changed but everything is new. It is one of the oldest and one of the most intimate and one of the least personal.

centre of consciousness that witnesses and remembers it all. The potters wheel is, of course, only one amongst many wheels, but it is specially significant

the most surprising of all human experiences, one of

because there one actually touches the point in the centre where there is no movement...

from: Pottery, People and Time: A Workshop in Action, by Alan Caiger-Smith. Richard Dennis Publications 1995

Alan Caiger-Sm ith

14

A Singular Planet
A BENEVOLENT BEING, a peripatetic traveller through space who chances with delight upon our shining jewel-like planet Earth is rst confused and then astonished to observe the great masses of humanity surging all around the globe apparently all conjoined in one common and overriding preoccupation. Amazed, he sees all these beings appear to be focused on a single object; their time and passion, comment, argument and every moment not dedicated to the necessary needs of their existence is directed obsessively to this one single thing. The thing has many forms but only one shape. It can be anywhere and nowhere and sometimes everywhere all the time. It is motionless, or moves with perpetual energy, at times so slowly its motion becomes hardly perceptible, at others with a lighting rapidity bewildering to the eye and always with a wonderful array of variety and ingenuity. Perhaps, the traveller wonders, all these beings are engaged in trying to capture and control the deepest essence of their world, drawn helplessly to this unitary symbol of the planet that bears them and sustains their little lives; or perhaps again the thing represents a higher, universal secret, the reality behind the ever-changing mirage of the life which they perceive only dimly through their weak and still incompletely evolved organs of knowledge and perception. There must truly be some hidden wonder, the traveller thinks, to so powerfully attract the attention and become the very stuff of their lives on which lifelong friendships depend and dissolve, family relationships rely and fail; over which fierce battles are fought again and again, causing rafts of legislation to be passed and laws invented, societies great and small created and destroyed. Love itself could have no greater power. And indeed they love the thing and all its works. Footballs, cricket balls, golf balls, tennis balls, snooker balls, balls being thrown, kicked, struck with an endless variety of cunningly constructed implements, pursued on foot, on horseback, through the water and the air, a myriad of leaden balls explosively projected at a multitude of targets, living and inanimate, from ingeniously contrived explosive devices and every human being, planet-wide, is borne about their business and pleasure upon wheels revolving smoothly round a bearing-race of heat-forged balls of steel.

The whole of humanity is in pursuit of unity, the traveller realises, fascinated to witness this awesomely comic spectacle. The whole one-world is playing an eternal and endlessly varied game of catch-me-if-you-can, and yet, looking more closely, he sees the players seem always to prefer the game to its object they must eschew finality, for if once achieved, the need for players, or a game at all, will simply cease. So always there must be just one more game, the wheel must always turn again. Better to travel hopefully than to arrive perhaps? Hes heard that before, in a lot of different places. He wonders how long its going to take them to understand there is simply something else, something neither one nor two, nor any other number, for numbers, like time and space themselves, are objects of perception and all perception relies upon duality and so by the rules of the game must ultimately be illusion not this. And yet, the traveller sees, all are convinced that the tiny limits of their perception contain the whole of reality this is all there is, they cry and yet there is a doubt, a basic and avoided fear; what I dont know can hurt me. In the eternal avoidance of this crucial understanding that their only truly creative possibility is to wholeheartedly give up all perception and be still the traveller sees all human quests for truth are much the same divided and directed toward personal pursuits of power and comfort and preference, each strand of personally perceived truth tacitly or vociferously defended to be the only and the best, soft-sold, hard sold, even and worst of all enforced. Esoteric non-dualism, Eastern, Western, American non-dualism, interfaith non-dualism, no-faith nondualism, muscular fundamentalist non-dualism, original cerebral non-dualism, new, wordy, wordless, renegade, conformist non-dualism, reformed non-dualism, devotional non-dualism, comfortable middle-class nondualism, my non-dualism, your non-dualism it really is all ONE, thinks the traveller, smiling wryly and aiming the glistening sphere of his vehicle like an arrow into the heart of the Sun its all .....
E.T.

15

The Still Point of the Turning World focused here on the cave at Jyotir Math in the high Him alaya where Adi Shankara was given his first com plete illum ination 1200 years ago. Yet the Still Point is really everywhere all the tim e...

Diagram and Dream

WE WERE LOOKING AT A DIAGRAM showing the relationship between physical, subtle and causal levels and how all are contained within the divine level. Suddenly I remembered a dream I had some time ago. I was looking at three rooms one above another. The bottom room was a farm kitchen dominated by an enormous double-bed where a cosy middle-aged peasant couple were warming themselves at an open fire. The whole room breathed comfort and contentment. The next room was strangely misty and vague. The top room was a book-lined study where a lady in

a tweed suit, with cropped grey hair and glasses, was explaining some academic point in a clipped Oxford accent. I liked her so much. Then I returned to the misty middle room and followed a misty path sweeping out of it to a much larger room with a semicircular front lined with tall clear windows. I sat down on the window seat and looked out. Below me spread the most beautiful and mysterious landscape I could ever have imagined great mountains and forests and a seashore. From the shore stretched a great glittering ocean reaching out into innity. I am still grateful for this dream and prefer it to a diagram.
Anne Garten (first printed in Contact 39)

16

I S TA N BU L DIARY
P. D. OUSPENSKY MEETS
WHEN PDO FIRST MET THE WHIRLING DERVISHES IN 1908 he sensed a mystery, not so much of how they did it but why they did it. 12 years later in 1920, having nally escaped from the Russian revolution and after spending 8 years of intense selfstudy with George Gurdjieff he was in a better position to understand and assess the true signicance of the Mevlevi Tradition and practice. The system he had studied for those 8 years made it clear that to discover the miraculous, the Divine consciousness present at the centre of every human being, it was necessary to learn how to become free of the dominance of the mechanical body-mind which rules our lives with such insistence. Not that there is anything wrong with the body-mind, but for a higher life, for divine consciousness to flow naturally through us, the body-mind and the changing ego it generates must happily become a servant rather than the master. In his talks with the Mevlevis PDO found ample evidence of the similarities of their approach to his own: the fundamental unity of man and the creation; the essential need for self-knowledge at the beginning and the following equal development of knowledge and being; the practical relativity of personal truth and the consequent demand for tolerance of all; the need for constant practice and self-observation to balance the energies of mind, heart and body so that the divine inner presence can be allowed to manifest in the midst of ordinary life. All these things and more show that the Mevlevis were exemplary practitioners of the Fourth Way where the mystical revelation of universal love and eternal consciousness can be allowed to flourish and illuminate human life in the midst of the daily humdrum and cut and thrust of worldly existence. Without PDOs meetings with the Mevlevis and his insights into their inner practice, the Turning would very likely never have been allowed to come to Colet House. Most significantly, it was Resuhi Baykaras grandfather whom PDO met at the Yenikap Tekke and the account of the Mukabele he witnessed there could just as well be describing a Mukabele at Colet House today. Perhaps we can once again recognise and celebrate more clearly and openly the deep roots of tradition and practice we all share then and now. The following extracts from PDOs diary of 1920 are made available here for the first time.
Gerald Beckwith

THE WHIRLING DERVISHES

3 October 1920 The Tunnel Mevlevi Tekke
The Sheikh asked me if I knew anything of mysticism. Had I read any books about the Dervishes? I said I had read nothing. He said reading was comparatively useless! One might understand something, but it would not be what was meant by the writer and practice was everything In reply to his first question I said something about Russian savants and travellers and an experimental school in Europe which I had attended. I explained the aim as the idea of balancing mind, emotions and body, and said something about different states of consciousness and possibilities. The Sheikh said there were different ways of waking up, of man realizing his possibilities. I asked if the Mevlevi way could be compared with that of the Yogi, the monk or the fakir, explaining what I meant. The Sheikh said if a man overstrained any part of himself he became sick; he must develop all parts of himself at the same time and that was what the Mevlevi tried to do. I asked two questions about mechanicalness and about the necessity of psychological change in order to know. The Sheikh said we were certainly mechanical as we were and that knowing and being must develop together; the one could not do so without the other.

16 October. Visit to the Mevlevi Dervishes at Yenikap just outside the walls of Stamboul. (Resuhi Baykaras Tekke)

I arrived just before the turning began (after the Nat). The Sheikh of the Tekke was seated opposite the entrance door. The dervishes were seated to the left of the Sheikh and opposite him each side of the entrance, on the strip of carpet round the circular dancing oor. Two ney players were blowing in the gallery above the entrance opposite the Sheikh. They always played the same few notes with very denite beats. After about a quarter of an hour the neys nished in a crescendo. At the end of the crescendo all the dervishes knelt forward and kissed the ground. Then the Sheikh rose and the dervishes walked once past the Sheikh from left to right, bowing down and kissing his hand. From this point onwards ve small

17

drums were beaten in the music gallery in a regular rhythm of four or ve beats and three or four half beats, joined by the neys. Intermittent chanting by the ney and drum players continued throughout. Then the Sheikh, turned to the right and walked slowly round the outside of the circle. The dervishes followed. As each one passed across the place where the Sheikh had been sitting, he stopped on the righthand side, turned and bowed to the man immediately following him, who stood facing him on the left-hand side of the place where the Sheikh had been sitting. After the whole group including the Sheikh had passed three times round the whole circle, the Sheikh stood in his place and the dervishes took off their outer cloaks and appeared in the usual white robe with full skirt and short bodice. They then walked slowly passed the Sheikh from the left. Two men who had sat nearest the Sheikh did not take off their cloaks, and as soon as they had passed before the Sheikh, they moved a little way into the circle, one to the right, and the other to the left of the Sheikh. Then they moved about among the dancers apparently watching their condition. During the dancing they stopped one boy and one old man and sent them back to their places. As each dancer passed the Sheikh he began slowly at first and then rather faster to whirl. The movement is from right to left, the left foot remaining nearly flat all the time and the right foot being slightly lifted on to the toe and put down twice to give the necessary momentum to complete one full circle. The arms are outstretched, the right hand being palm upwards and the left hand palm downwards. The upper part of the body gives the impression of being kept rigid. Some turn their heads slightly slantwise. The thirteen dancers kept more or less the same distance all the time and moved round near the edge of the circle. The first dance lasted about five minutes.

Resuhi Baykaras grandfather Sheikh of the Yenikap Tekke in 1921

Then the music stopped and the dancers remained motionless with crossed arms and hands on the shoulders for one minute in groups of twos and fours (one group of five). Then the music began again and the dancers walked passed the Sheikh from the left and only began to turn after they had passed him. The second dance lasted about one and a half minutes and I counted the full turns of one man as fifty. The same pause and walk past the Sheikh followed. The third dance lasted seven minutes. I counted the turns of the same man as about three hundred and five. During the pause following this dance the Sheikh walked out towards the middle of the room, bowing in front of him at regular intervals and then returned to his place bowing. The final dance lasted also seven minutes, the Sheikh walking forward very slowly into the circle and whirling very slowly himself without lifting his arms. When the music stopped at the end of this dance, the dervishes knelt down in the places where they had stopped whirling, and the man who had been moving about watching them went round placing their cloaks over each man. All chanted a prayer in unison. All the dancers then went back to their places and sat cross-legged. Then the Sheikh rose, turned to the right and repeated a prayer, then faced straight again. Another prayer by the Sheikh followed with responses by all the dervishes, the voices dropping at the end of the prayers and responses, which reminded me, except for the final drop in the voice, of Orthodox church chanting. Finally the Sheikh walked slowly out through the door of the dancing hall immediately in front of his seating place, chanting a prayer and dropping his voice at the end as before.

18 October Scutari Mevlevi Dervishes

18

A young dervish took me to the living part of the Tekke and showed me a kind of dormitory for four or ve dervishes. I asked him some questions about the turning, how a beginner was taught etc. He showed me a sort of circular wooden tray about a metre in diameter and three or four inches thick, and with a hole in the middle into which a wooden peg is tted. According to his account the novice starts practising on this tray, placing his foot so that the big toe and the rst toe grip the peg. He starts with about ten turns and increases them slightly every night. When he can do a hundred turns without difficulty on the tray he is allowed to join the dancers on the ordinary dancing oor. He said there was no counting but the dervishes inwardly repeat Allah breathing in on the rst syllable and out

on the second in time to the music. Without the music, he said it would not be possible to turn for long. The music produced a kind of intoxication.

The Naqshbandi order of Dervishes is one that works rather on Yogic lines, I think. One of their chief exercises is the prayer, Zhikr, done with movements and special breathing exercises, but without any repetition of prayers aloud. Legend says that one of their great leaders in Peshawar inhaled the rst half of the usual prayer formula and exhaled the second half three hours later. We were shown into the Sheiks room, clean and bare with a divan, 2 chests of drawers and 4 framed scrolls. There were barred windows looking out towards Aya Sophia. ... He was obviously old and when he got up to greet us seemed much bowed, but his face was remarkable for an extraordinarily soft relaxed expression, and his eyes were very large and clear. He often reminded me in this way of Gurdjieff. He spoke rather rapidly and low, though musically. ... He asked me where I came from and why I was interested in Dervishes. I told him that I was interested in trying to find out the Truth and that people seemed to be seeking along different lines. I was beginning on one [line] and had heard of others in Constantinople. I asked him what he thought most essential if one set out to find Truth. He said a master and sometimes a school. I asked him what was the first advice he gave pupils, he said to know themselves. We were ruled by two forces mind and passion ... and could only overcome the latter with the aid of the former and by perseverance and patience. He said some pupils made quick progress but he believed in the slow ones who stayed longer. ... I then put questions to him about different states of consciousness: sleep, ordinary waking state, and then another state compared with which the second was sleep. He did not seem familiar with this idea but replied that it could be put like that. Certainly most people slept but more were awake than we thought. Nowadays in Turkey, especially in Constantinople people had grown slack. He thought in Europe today, there were more people readier to discipline themselves than in the East, at any rate in Turkey. I tried to explain our ideas of mechanicalness, and why we are mechanical, and about centres. He said all that was true but the important thing was to cultivate mind. Certainly emotions were fire and we could not

24 October Naqshbandi Tekke near Babbali

do without body, but the fire must be lit and controlled by mind. I tried then to explain the law of octaves to see what he would say. He said this again seemed to him quite true. Certainly without shocks at certain intervals no man could go far in spiritual growth. It was good if a man could give them to himself. At about this stage he said my questions were very fine (subtle). He ended the conversation by telling rather a simple story to illustrate honesty as the best policy. A mother sent her son to Constantinople to school and sewed the money for the journey and school expenses in different parts of his coat, telling him at the same time that her only advice was that he should always tell the truth. Thieves caught him and when they found the first piece of gold, asked him if he had any more. He said he had and showed them. When they had taken it all, they asked him why he had been such a fool. He told them the truth and they were so pleased that they gave him all the money back and more.

31 October Mevlevi Tunnel Tekke

A young man told me a little more about the order, how a novice had to serve 100 days in the kitchen and do menial work, sleeping anywhere in the Tekke, and then was promoted to a room of his own. Mostly he asked me questions, e.g. what the word esoteric means. A discussion on this was quite useful, as I got the Arabic equivalent for it and some other Arabic terms. After about half an hour, as the Sheikhs were occupied still I went away, but in the courtyard stopped and spoke to a tall dervish whose face attracted me. He chants in the Tunnel Tekke Mukabele and Id seen him before at Scutari where he lives. He asked me why I was interested and I told him in a general way. He then began rather rapidly in Turkish to tell me about the Mevlevi order. I understood the gist of some of it. The Mevlevi was the oldest of the Turkish orders. Its adherents today knew more about the original teaching of Rumi and its practice than could be said of any other movement or order. Foreigners who came to see them thought that they merely danced, repeated prayers and went about in long cloaks. Also they could not understand why they ate, drank and went to restaurants like other people. The Mevlevi teaching was based on the likeness (sameness) of all men and the essential oneness of man in spite of the different ways in which the single machine (he used this word) was twisted by different people and in spite of external disguises of all kinds. In life, everyone wanted things for

19

From Blackstone Master Magician Comics circa 1946

themselves; he illustrated it by a meal where everyone helped himself to meat and drink and went away separately to eat it. In the Mevlevi teaching no man took what was anothers, because what was given was shared among all who could receive it.

The Sheikh began by asking me why I had wished to visit him. I reminded him of our conversation at the Tunnel Tekke and replied that I wanted to know more about the way of the Mevlevis. He asked whether there were still mystics and people interested in mysticism in the West. He had read of many in the past, and I said there certainly were and in America too. Are there any schools or organised movements? he asked. I told him that there were organisations and societies, but nothing so organised as there appeared to be in the East. Much was written about it too in the West. He then questioned me about what these organisations did. I said I thought that apart from much talk and writing, others were serious organisations aiming at inner freedom and inner discipline by various psychological methods and by physical exercises, fasts etc. I reminded him of what I had told him before about Russian savants and the teaching, which I was trying to follow. I asked him if he thought genuine mystical experiences were possible without school and systematic work. He said clearly many poets and others in the West and elsewhere had had such genuine experiences but he did not think so often, so systematically or with such good results to themselves and others, as those gained by school work in the East. In any case it was difficult for anyone to

3 November Visit to private house at Scutari of the Sheikh of Tunnel Tekke

20

judge in such matters without talking to the man who had experienced a mystic state. He believed however, the important thing to be that in all the world there were people with one common aim communication, with Allah whatever the different methods they adopted. He then spoke of truth being the centre of a circle and provided man stuck to the radius (way) he had chosen, he ought to reach the centre. What was useless was to keep jumping from one of the radii to another. The advantage of the Mevlevi order was that its ideas were fundamental to all true religions and it was tolerant of them all. He quoted a story from the Mevlevi bible the Mathnawi: A Greek, an Arab, a Turk and a Persian were travelling together and coming to a new country and being hungry they discussed what they would buy to refresh themselves. Each only knew his own language and each said in his own language the word for grapes. As they seemed unable to agree on one dish they began to fight and only stopped when another traveller knowing all four languages came up and told them how foolish they were. The Sheikh suggested the same might be said of the quarrels of Moslems, Christian and Jewish churches. The Mevlevis were in the position of the last named traveller who saw the futility of the quarrel. I then asked him how the Mevlevi follower began his discipline and I again explained the ideas about centres, the broken-down machine, sleep and consciousness and the necessity of balancing centres. The Sheikh replied that a kind of harmony had to be restored. In his language what was important was to bring intelligence and spirit into the position of rulers and to destroy nefis, which in Turkish seems roughly to correspond to the carnal man of the Epistles and perhaps almost to personality in our sense. Self-examination and selfdenial in various ways were necessary for this. I tried to describe our idea of different personalities growing round a man and shutting him in as into a prison. The personalities of all the various life organisations and people etc. with whom a man was thrown in contact from boyhood. He seemed to understand this but I am not sure. He said that as long as boy or man were easily influenced, anyone who could help them should try to keep them under good influences. ... I then asked how important a part the actual turning played in the Mevlevi training and discipline. He replied that the turning was wonderfully designed to make man forget not only his body, but all external hypnotic influences. Prayers whether in Church or Mosque were not nearly strong enough or strenuous enough to do this. At the same time, in the beginning,

there had been very much more of the physical movement. Now people turned for an hour or two hours, it was only part of the discipline. Then, in the past, it was nearly everything and much more elaborate. People turned for a whole day and on successive days. It was on a much bigger scale and the states produced were more ecstatic. Now we see only 15 or 20 dancers in one circle. In the old days there were several concentric circles of people all moving at different paces to represent different categories of the universe. On the outside of the circle, as I understood him, were three separate circles representing minerals, plants and animals (including apparently man, but I am not sure if man was not yet another circle). The Sheikh represented Allah and the sun. He did not sit in the centre but at a fixed point on the side because he was only their Caliph, representative. He said one ceremony had an important significance (I was not clear which but I think it was the marching round with the Sheikh at the head before the turning begins and then the kissing of the Sheikhs hand by each man before he begins to turn). This implied that Man and God were equal in that man could be God and at the same time that God was both the beginning and the end and all-embracing. Man could be this too. He said there was much more significance in the original Mukabele and he ought to be able to tell me more another time. Our talk ended on the subject of esotericism and secrecy. He agreed there was no secrecy except the inability to hear and see and take what was there. Among other things the Sheikh told me he had been thirty years in a Tekke in Cairo of which his grandfather had been head and of which his nephew was now head. His father had been Sheikh of the big Tekke at Gallipoli, now closed. He spoke naively about some things; for instance, for God nothing was evil. Just as a man who loved saw nothing but the good in the object of his love, so God who loved all creation saw only the good in things created. Again, everything came from Allah: so no man must utter complaint about his lot. This had enabled him personally to bear all manner of illnesses. When friends asked him about the state of his health, he made it a rule always to say he was well. He also quoted a story about turning the other cheek. In his story the Dervish who was struck turned the other cheek saying the blow came from Allah. He also talked of the existence of evil in this way: There existed angels or pure spirits, mind and conscience without nefis carnal passions etc. There also existed animals

22 November

with only nefis. Man had been given by God not only all the nefis but mind and conscience too so that with the latter he could struggle to subdue the former. If he could overcome his nefis he would rise higher than the angels; if he lived only in nefis he fell below the animals. I tried by questions to find out whether the idea of nefis and mind and conscience corresponded with the idea of essence and personality but without success, though nefis seems rather like personality. For instance, he spoke of man acting and speaking from nefis and not from conscience. ... Two things did emerge from the conversation. One was the insistence of the Mevlevi on the relativity of truth and knowledge. The Sheikh said that a man who was seeking truth must realise that this was relative at any one time to his own inner state. No man could say he really had knowledge or that what was true for him today would be so for him a few years hence. This was why the Mevlevi was so tolerant of other religions and sects. The other was the Mevlevis desire to avoid dogmatism and formalised religion. Once a true religion was founded, its followers through succeeding generations tended to formalise the meaning and practice of the original teaching. He gave as an illustration the Eastern church, at any rate in the Byzantine Empire. The priests found a growing demand for some codified system of worship and practice. In the New Testament they could find nothing of this sort. In the Old Testament what was given belonged to Judaism. So they borrowed from Rome much that was really Roman civil law and so destroyed the true tradition. He said that most men found too hard the way of Christianity taught by Christ. It depended too much on a mans personal inner work; so there arose the demand for external rules which all could understand and follow. This was the history of all true religions. Source: Yale University Library PDOuspensky Memorial Collection Tatiana Nagro A TURNERS POEM

One hand to receive and one hand to give and a pillar from earth to sky. What am I? I am a nothing, I am an emptyness spinning; A vessel to be lled with Gods love In a world of turning stars.
Anne Brunsdon

21

FALLING IN LOVE WITH RUMI his Poetry & Music

I WAS FIRST INTRODUCED TO THE TURNING and the Mukabele at Colet House in 1963 by Sybil Drew, an eminent fencing teacher, who had recently learnt to turn. She was, I believe, the rst woman to be admitted to the French Academy of Fencing. She had an extremely strong character and exerted a powerful inuence over me. In those days it was the custom for newcomers not to learn to turn straight away after witnessing the Mukabele. An introduction to Ouspenskys system of knowledge was given first to help understand and establish the true value and inner significance of the ceremony. This I did, first under the remarkable tutelage of Alan Caiger-Smith and later with Professor Richard Guyatt. When I did come to learn the Turning, it was a great privilege to know eyh (Sheik) Resuhi Baykara, who, together with his wife Mutahhara, became close and trusty friends. Resuhi had been born and brought up at the Yenikap Mevlevi Tekke (dervish lodge) in Istanbul where his father had been the third generation of Baykara eyhs to preside over this Tekke community before the banning of all Dervish orders by the edict of Kemal Atatrk's constitution in 1926. Thus, Resuhi Baykara was an important link with the Mevlevi Tradition which had survived in Turkey through all its many vicissitudes since Mevlana and his family arrived as refugees in Konya in the 13th century. By the 1960s the suppression of the Dervishes was getting worse, not better, and Resuhi had a well-founded fear that the Tradition could soon be forced into final extinction. The unexpected contact made with the successors of P.D. Ouspensky in England offered the Tradition a possibility of survival and Resuhi was initially encouraged to consider the invitation seriously when he read Ouspenskys record of his own meetings with the Mevlevis in 1908 and 1920. (See A New Model of the Universe p.3859) Nevertheless, it was clear that Resuhis unprecedented confidence in entrusting his precious Tradition to nonMuslim Europeans was founded primarily on his recognition of the level of being, self-discipline, honesty and inner understanding displayed by Dr Francis Roles and some of his close associates. He became convinced he could trust these people to respect and preserve his Tradition without altering it or claiming it for themselves until such time as it could once again be allowed to flourish in its native land. I was taught to turn by Michael Willis-Fleming, an old

Etonian with a formidable intellect and a subtle sense of humour who was strictly faithful to Resuhis example and instruction. The training was rigorous and required early rising in order to attend the training from 7.30 am every day for a period of six weeks. In fact, this training, (called ile, an ordeal) was by no means as arduous as had been the ile in the traditional Tekkes of Ottoman Turkey which consisted of 1001 days of turning together with comprehensive reading and learning of the Quran and Rumis Mathnawi. Aspiring dervishes had to perform all the meanest chores of the community before earning an allotted cell of their own. My experience of knowing elderly Mevlevis and musicians in the 1960s encouraged my emphatic and abiding belief that the work and teachings of Mevlana are equally, or even more important than the Mukabele ceremony itself. Unaccompanied by a fundamental knowledge and understanding of Rumis teaching and the love and inspiration that arises from a deep familiarity with his great soul, the Mukablele alone can become a somewhat shallow thing. At that time, in the 1960s, we were fortunate at Colet House to have an excellent teacher of Rumi's Mathnawi his greatest work of didactic mystical poetry in the

22

person of Edmund Kindersley. Edmund, who was in his sixties at the time, had taken a Philosophy degree at Cambridge and was particularly interested in the NeoPlatonists, of whom Rumi himself had been well aware. Edmund was a great exegesist of Rumi and taught us a great deal; I still have recordings of some of his meetings. At the same time I was privileged to learn ilahis (Turkish religious songs) from Ferruh Mftol, now deceased, whose family remain close friends. I was also taught Mevlevi music and to play the ney, (the Turkish reed flute) by the Erguner family and by Aka Gndz Kutbay, all of whom were closely linked to the Mevlevis. Ferruh Mftol was a Turkish student of cybernetics at International House in London who taught me not only the music of the ilahis but the meaning of the texts. He also taught me much of Islam and the Hadis (the sayings of the Prophet ) I was first taught the ney and Turkish makams (musical modes) by Kudsi Erguner when his father was undergoing an eye operation in London. Subsequently in Istanbul, he (then only 16 years old) acted as a kind and helpful guide both to me and to Peter Hargreaves. We also became friends with his mother, Sheyla, and his two brothers Hlki and Sleyman. Kudsi introduced us to many musicians: the great

Resuhi Baykara England, 1970

non-prot educational foundation with the purpose of facilitating the experience of Divine Unity, Love, and Truth in the world. See www.susm.org

The Threshold Society, rooted within the traditions of Susm and inspired by the life and work of Mevlna Jalluddn Rumi, is an international

Aka Gndz Kutbay, Karl Signell, Niyazi Sayin and Ahmed Hatipolu, to mention only a few. All of these were stars of Radio Istanbul, regularly broadcasting to the whole nation. It was through these invaluable connections that we at Colet House were able for many years to maintain a Mutrib, a Mevlevi music group, with the ability to play four different Ayins (compositions) for the Mukabeles. The ney, which I have been playing indifferently for forty-five years, is like a wife to whom you are devoted and who rules you and gives you purpose. If you think you are playing it you are in error, for, if you are fortunate, it plays you. A similar process occurs with singing, whether it be ilahis or the Nat-i-Mevlana; it cannot happen if you feel you are doing it yourself. Nowadays, I run a weekly Mathnawi class at Colet House on Tuesdays with my Iranian friend Ali Saeedi whose help is invaluable in explaining and elucidating subtle points of exegesis and references to the Qur'an and the Hadis. Ali begins with a Farsi group at 5.30 pm and at 7.00 pm I join him to continue the analysis in English. The English text of the Mathnawi is taught from the Nicholson translation and commentaries. Some of the Turners attend the class until about 8.00 pm and we then continue with Rumi's ghazels in Persian (Farsi) and English. From time to time, Ali's brother Amir comes and sings the poetry of the ghazels which has been passed down through the generations for many centuries. Every Friday (6.30 pm at Colet House) I come with my friend Lennie Charles, an accomplished musician, to teach the ney to anyone interested. I am passing on to Lennie my knowledge of Turkish sacred music which broadens his general understanding of both Turkish classical and folk music. As well as the ney, Lennie also plays the rebab, the kabak kemane (Turkish violin) and all types of percussion. In all my happy times with Lennie and my other friends, we find that music happens when you are not there it takes its own course without being planned. This is the essence of the best spiritual meetings that we simply submit to what happens. That is the meaning of Sohbet. (spiritual togetherness) Lennie and I also attend meetings with other friends, mostly from the Threshold Society where Mevlevi music and zikhr, as well as readings from Rumi, are the theme although the content of these meetings is not planned. In this way, an important and equal balance is maintained between the Persian legacy of Mevlana his teachings and the Turkish legacy of Mevlana

23

Resuhi Baykara (right) and his older brother Garsi, circa 1924 both born and brought up in the Tekke. Garsi was a great Ney player and the teacher of Aka Gndz.

the vast corpus of Ottoman classical music, so much of which is closely linked with the Mukabele and the Turning. Resuhi Baykara brought the Mukabele to Colet House on the understanding that its form would be preserved without alteration a stipulation that has, to date, largely been faithfully observed. Resuhis own teacher and eyh, Mnir elebi ztorn, a Mevlevi eyh from Afyon, was a Mathnawi teacher (Mesnevihan) of whom we have recordings. Mnirs widow Halise was a great friend and mentor to me over many years, as was also their son Stk elebi and Glsm, his sister, who is now the eyh of the Turning at Colet House. Glsm is now of advanced years and her health is failing. I visit her with friends as often as possible. The elebi family, whom we at Colet know, are cousins of the present hereditary leader of the entire Mevlevi order, Faruk Hemdem elebi, whose son may succeed him in due course. In fact, it is Faruk Hemdemss sister Esin who is more actively concerned with the preservation of the tradition and who advises Mevlevi groups worldwide. She also guides her nephew, although it remains uncertain as to how or whether he will take up these responsibilities. Since the Dervish orders were closed down in 1926 there are now, to the best of my knowledge, no longer

any Mevlevis in Turkey who were born and brought up in a Tekke. The remaining hereditary successors are consequently and quite naturally dwindling in their influence and energy. Nevertheless, there are other eyhs in Istanbul, Konya and probably also elsewhere who have a genuine devotion and loyalty to the Tradition. What does the future hold? Mevlanas inspiration created a tradition that until 1926 practised a complete and all-encompassing way of life, every passing moment from birth to death. We who have been entrusted with its preservation have the responsibility and challenge of integrating this complete and uncompromising devotion and understanding into a very different, secular and distracted Western life-style. I have been a devoted follower of Rumi since my first encounter with him at his tomb in Konya in 1973 on a visit with Resuhi Baykara and Peter Hargreaves. Since then, I have studied the Mathnawi and his other works and although no English translation can transmit the full subtleties of meaning, rhythm and rhyme, it is possible, with the help of Persian speakers, to receive a powerful taste of what he himself was actually experiencing. Now and again one catches a glimpse of what his great soul was feeling in these spontaneous outpourings and it is these poems that are the real drinking party. Everyone is welcome. To quote the English poet, Ben Jonson: The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine.
Richard Stevens

Form is the manifestation of the heart. I am the servant of the poor dervish. What is the aim of the Sufi? To vanish in God.

We dont depend on the Turners. We dont depend on the singers. We dont depend on the players. We depend on Love.

Resuhi Baykara

24

reality.' Our experimental research of the past decade shows that, for today's world and under the right conditions, this assumption is no longer correct. We humans are much more than we think we are and Psychoenergetic Science continues to expand the proof of it. William A. Tiller, Ph.D. is professor emeritus of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

For the last four hundred years, an unstated assumption of science is that human intention cannot affect what we call 'physical

Three Relationships of Humans

OUR CONSCIOUSNESS seems to be largely localized in three primary relational domains, 1) man in relationship to the cosmos, 2) man in relationship to his local self and 3) man in relationship to society. Here, the word human (male or female) is meant by use of the word man. MAN IN RELATIONSHIP TO THE COSMOS To put this in perspective, consider the relationship of our cells to our bodies. I tend to think that, at a certain stage of evolutionary development, those parts that went into the individual cell all had consciousness and they formed a grouping which became a single cell having a unique life function and a unique sense of oneness. Then these cells gathered into groups to form specialized functioning units like glands which, in turn, became strung together to form a stellar constellation of energy flow. This became a body, our body/mind, and to the cell I suspect that we are God. In this regard, I tend to think that subtle structures at some critical level of organization form first in the human embryo and these form the energy field pattern or template that organizes physical cellular and organ development at a level sufficient for life functioning. Later, physical, emotional and mental self-management expand both the complexity and coherence of these energy field interactions so that the cells and organs can function at more efficient and effective levels. Likewise, as we scale things up a level, man is a bit of consciousness located on the Earth biosphere and he/she is gradually becoming more organized and more coherent until, someday, the Earth will function as a harmonious cell in a galaxy gland located in a cosmological energy construct that can be called a body, if you like, and many are inclined to call that our God. To be complete, this image should be drawn with counterparts in other dimensions than just the physical four-space with which we are familiar today. Finally, if scaled down deeply into the microcosm to the fundamental particle level or scaled up deeper into the macrocosm to structures beyond our present perceptions, we would find even more intricate rhythms in the fabric of Nature. Looking at the whole overall pattern, the entire human species seems to be part of one vast organism, and we seem to be individuated and separated from each other at the physical level only because the physical sensory systems of our [body/mind] simulator work on the basis of contrast, i.e., on a difference or differential effect. Because of the

mirror principle, we can expect that the sensory systems of the etheric level will be based on an integral effect where we will seem to be part of a larger whole. My current picture of the overarching cosmological process is similar to that expressed in the ancient teachings of eastern literature as the out-breathing and the inbreathing of the All. We seem to be a part of a vast system which is only stable in a dynamic state of change, i.e., the process is a cyclical (or spiral) one which oscillates inexorably, via well-defined laws of Nature, from a state of maximum coherence to a state of minimum coherence and back again. At certain periods, all essence and all substance at all dimensions of the cosmos are completely coherent, all wave functions are in total resonance and no differentiation exists so all is synchronously One. As the process of change begins, a differentiation initiates and grows, eventually giving rise to substance populating different dimensions of the cosmos. The substance organizes into various stable forms with certain unique functions. Radiation from each dimension has the capacity of organizing substance in the next, less coherent, dimension so that life-forms, societies and cultures can develop at different dimensions of the cosmos in a manner very analogous to what we know about the physical dimension. Within man, as this degree of incoherence grows, the dominantly functioning sensory system shifts gradually from dimension to dimension,

25

. . . any individual can, with directed-consciousness and intention,

i.e., from the spiritual to the mental, etc., down to the physical. Thus, the dimension of a humans perception, and thus their conscious action, also shifts as this evolutionary process inexorably unfolds. The so-called fall of man should not be thought of as a moral judgement but rather as a process over which he/she had very little conscious control. We seem to be able to influence only the rate of change, not the direction of change. It is inexorable physics that directs man on the outward path away from the condition of maximum coherence and it is the same inexorable physics that impels him on the inbound path, once he has turned the corner, back towards the coherence state of oneness again. It is my belief that we have turned that corner and are heading home again. We have come from advanced societies whose special technologies suited the great mental capacities of the inhabitants and we are heading back in that direction. We have come from societies where the inhabitants reliably sensed deeper dimensions of the universe than we presently do so that they readily manipulated space, time and matter, and we are heading back in that same direction. This seems to be the vector of transition for us and we are on the fringe of a mixed state wherein we regularly perceive the five physical senses realm but occasionally perceive aspects of another realm. The frequency of this other perception should increase with time and things should subtly change until it is the five physical senses realm that is only occasionally perceived. At this point, etheric substance appears to be condensing more and more into host physical substance and the ambient deltron concentration is increasing as the grain size of the nodal networks increase concomitant with the increase in consciousness of some of the individuals on the planet. The veils between dimensions appear to be thinning so the incidence of strange phenomena should increase. All are indicators of the in-process cosmological change. As we sense this new realm more and more, we have a type of precognitive awareness of it which allows it to play a growing role in our thoughts and actions. Thus, via the simulator mechanism, we program it into our future and, the more we do, the more adaptive to it do we become. Thus, the overarching cosmological flow process of change is linked intimately into the simulator process of change. Everything flows consistently. Ultimately, every member of the Family of God must return. When Spirits original state of direct communication is reached, neither the simulator nor the seeming miracle, which are both learning aids, serve any further purpose. MAN IN RELATIONSHIP TO HIS LOCAL SELF Just like the dual four-spaces, with one being the inverse of the other and the substance in one having a type of mirror relationship to that in the other, the human has an inner world and an outer world which vie for attention. Since the outer world appears to bear a direct relationship (a manifested reflection) to the superposed inner worlds of collective humanity, the outer world will only change in a significant way by major changes in the inner worlds of a large number of individuals. Our local outer world is the way it is because of a cooperative effect that sum the inner/outer projections of many individuals, local and nonlocal. Any individual, no matter how evolved, lives in this ambient outer environment and may influence it to some degree by the quality of their inner world state but probably not significantly (unless they build a group coherence with many others of similar consciousness). Within the framework of the outer world River of Life, any individual can, with directed-consciousness and intention, construct an inner world condition of the highest quality represented by their subtle level structures and by their spectrum of responses to the outer events encountered as they ride the river. This inner world state is built lifetime by lifetime for the entity while the outer world state is just the current play that the entity is acting in. The entity or being is growing inside the body simulator and is the product of the process. The outer world state is largely the vehicle for building the entity at the inner world level. The outer world condition is not insignificant, rather, it is important but not nearly so much (by orders of magnitude) as the inner world condition of any and all members of humanity. It is more important to pay attention to inner world self-development than press for immediate outer world changes and, by example, radiate our highest qualities to enrich those around us. Then, any outer world changes that are collectively initiated are stabilized by ones collective state of being. The entity enjoys the process most by becoming one with the river while building the individual consciousness to a level which can begin to alter the flow of the river. When I first came to California in 1964, I learned the lesson of how long it can take to make the transition between a conscious awareness of the need to change something in self and the final fulfilment of that need in my automatic day-to-day behavior. My wife lovingly alerted me to an unconscious tendency to be untidy in the bedroom of our new home by leaving socks and underwear lying around (or even kicking them under the bed). Moi? Surely you are exaggerating? I protested. After about six to twelve

This refers to the increasing occurrence of human perception widening to allow greater communication between the material and the invisible worlds. For a proper understanding of Tillers description of the mechanism, read the book!

26

construct an inner world condition of the highest quality . . .

acceptance of a new self-image. However, for an image to months of these loving alerts, I began to stop completely be feasible, it must be able to be internalized and this ignoring them and began to try and justify my lack of requires critical levels of perceptual sophistication in the consciousness about these things by referring to all the masses. This need not be intellectual sophistication, important things I was thinking about instead. But she intuitive sophistication would do just fine. wouldnt let me off the hook and patiently kept trying to To achieve this goal, we will need to use all of our get me to change this habit. After about another year, I gave societal educational technologies, our biofeedback tools up trying to make excuses for myself and, because I loved and whatever other mechanisms are at our disposal to her and it was important to her, I decided to seriously try allow people, through self-directed processes, to and change this habit. Well, I tried and I failed and I tried internalize such an evolutionary self-image and have it and I failed and I tried again. It took so much of my matched by a supportive state of consciousness, that is, it is consciousness just to remember about those stupid socks necessary to proceed past the state of mere intellectual and underwear that I could have drafted a dozen scientific awareness to the stage of consistent, papers. However, after another three if not automatic, organismic to five years I had completely ... it is necessary to proceed past response to this transcendental broken the old habit and was tidy in image of man. the bedroom in a fully automatic the state of mere intellectual Two examples of transformation fashion without the use of any awareness to the stage of at the physical level are worth obvious conscious effort. Of course, consistent, if not automatic, considering in this regard. The first it only took me five to seven years relates to two young men with overall to reach that achievement organismic response to this identical manifested athletic prowess some people are slow to change old . transcendental image of man who wish to learn to run the high habits! hurdles. The one young man is impatient, he immediately sets up the high hurdles on the MAN IN RELATIONSHIP TO SOCIETY track and begins to run and jump them. He knocks each of Sri Aurobindo has said: To be wholly and integrally them down in turn. He sets them all up again at the same conscious of ones self and of all the truth of ones being is full height and knocks them down again. He does this what is implied by the perfect emergence of the several times a day for a week and eventually gives up in individuals consciousness and it is towards that which disgust with the feeling that he is just not capable of evolution tends. All being is one, and to be fully conscious running the high hurdles competitively. The other young means to be integrated with the consciousness of all with man also initially sets up the hurdles at full height and also the universal self and force and action. Throughout knocks them all down in his first attempt. However, he history, it has been possible for some individuals to live this realizes that this experiment just shows that he has not as a perennial philosophy which transcends temporal and reached the desired capability yet. Next, he sets up the cultural differences. However, this state of awareness has low hurdles and finds that he can jump over them at a not been a reality for the preponderant masses of people. running pace. He continues to practice at this level until he They have a very different self-image and yet it is the has developed a smooth rhythm at a swift pace. Then, he collective self-image that drives the collective life simulator raises the bar a notch and continues practicing until he can and creates the new mass future (or collective future). hurdle this new level with a smooth rhythm and a swift A fundamental problem for democratic societies could pace. Then, he again raises the bar a notch and practises, arise when an image of man which is necessary for societal and then another notch, etc., until the bar is eventually at survival and development is not within the perceptual the full height for high hurdles and he is able to swiftly power of the population. In other words, one could jump these hurdles with an easy rhythm. The second perhaps describe an image of man which could make young man succeeded in reaching his goal, whereas, the intelligible a way of life that would ensure our survival and athletically equally capable first young man wasnt willing our further evolutionary development, but which was not to accept the evidence of where he was in the process and realizable because there was not a mass state of thus to strive, with patience and persistence, via a series of consciousness to translate the intellectual-linguistic small gains towards his desired goal. How often do we constructs of the few into a living mind-set for the many. reflect on similar examples acted out in our own lives. And yet we are at a point in human history where the old The second example deals with the building of a image of man has created such an array of potentially worthy protagonist. Let us suppose we realize that terminal problems for our biological simulators that resistance and struggle are necessary for our growth as a effective survival of this vehicle requires the deep

27

wrestler or boxer (any choice will serve, even as a professor) but we do not have a worthy opponent to stretch us. We have only the raw material in the form of an athletically capable and interested but untutored individual. We decide to make him our protagonist and so begin the contest with only a small fraction of our ability brought into play. He struggles but finds that he is able to meet this level of force and eventually surmount it. Then, we slowly escalate the level of our functioning ability and we find that he can begin to match that too. We continue the escalation at a rate no greater than that which can be met and eventually surmounted by our adversary. In this manner, we are eventually led to bring our full manifested abilities into play. Our protagonist is now becoming quite confident and meets this level of force and skill, and then begins to surmount it now it is our turn to stretch for we have truly built a worthy opponent! This type of procedure applies equally well to the building of a person, a company, a nation, or a world. One of the prime lessons to be learned from these examples is that real progress requires people evolvement and it is wasteful effort to force it to proceed faster than people can change their deep-rooted habits, their mind-sets or their developed capabilities. If one tries to push outer progress or outer change at a rate faster than they can alter their inner circuits to keep in confident tune with it i.e., completely assimilate it, then either the peoples potential will be degenerated or they will attempt to destroy the structure imposing such intolerable conditions on them. All of the power and vitality of any organization or society ultimately rests with the people they are the only lasting asset. The only real asset of our nation is the people with their skills, their ethics and their efforts it is from the people that all greatness flows. Build the people to manifest their potential fully and joyfully and they will create the solutions to all the needs of any society. One way of accelerating the desired transformation in individuals and societies is via human energy-field interactions. This can be illustrated by considering the mechanism of radiation influence that one finds in the guru/chela or teacher/student relationship. First, I wish to propose that every individual taps energy from the cosmos and transforms it into various wave components which may be utilized to build discrete patterns in his/her energy field that eventually become the materialized behaviour patterns of that individual. Certain manifestations or materializations (at physical, mental or other levels) cannot be successfully formed if some of the key wave components are absent. The individual must therefore wait to materialize such a behavior pattern until either (a) he/she has developed sufficiently in consciousness to automatically generate them internally or (b) he/she

receives them from the external radiation field of someone else. It is also proposed that the radiation field of an individual contains all the wave components associated with all their manifested and materialized abilities. Thus, the guru radiates all the wave components consistent with his/her achievements. The aspirant tunes his/her attention to the guru and absorbs these wave components as they pass through their body on the energy stream. He/she is then able to manifest these abilities to some degree. However, his/her internal circuitry is adaptable and, as they manifest these new abilities, their circuitry also adapts and their consciousness changes so that they begin to become self-generators of the needed wave components. He/she has enhanced the integration of his/her extended energy structure and begins to be able to do new things, perceive new thoughts, etc., because he/she has grown in consciousness. It seems that the radiated wave component spectrum of an individual is intimately tied to the individuals manifested consciousness. In this way, each of us may exercise some influence on the transformation of the masses by our personal radiation fields. Especially those from the heart projecting the individual frequencies of love! This is also the pathway for healing the planet. from Science and Human Transformation William A Tiller, Pavior Publishing 1997 for more information, visit www.tiller.org

When People Meet

Who writes these symphonies of passing men, That meetings come together into streams And streams to rivers, rivers to ocean ow Time, and time again? For what is time That can so stop and link these island minds Into an unguessed future? What strange winds Through many-peopled sleeping Leviathan Of mismatched dreams, Blow towards man As man will one day be? Who writes the waves upon the sea?
Robin Amis (From Who Writes the Waves, poems by Robin Amis, Agora Books)

28

OBITUARY

Alison Gordon
ALISON GORDON studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Frederic Jackson. After a period of work in London as an accompanist to the London Philharmonic Choir and in concert performances in opera she travelled to the Hochschule fr Musik und Theater in Hanover, Germany, to study with the distinguished Swiss pianist, Karl Engel. It was for her outstanding professional musicianship that she received a Gulbenkian Fellowship to study Bach and this enabled her to continue working in Portugal with Karl Engel, Helena Costa and in chamber music master classes with Sandor Vegh. During her career, Alison gave recitals in Europe and in the USA and performed at Londons Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room. Chamber music and Lieder were strong in her repertoire, while her Bach studies led to a love of the harpsichord, with harpsichord recitals and concertos adding to her body of work. She also taught at Sheffield, Newcastle and Durham uni-versities, was a member of staff at Dartington College of Arts and was cofounder of Living Music, which put on concerts in private houses in London during the 1970s and 80s. More recently, she spent a few years living in Gloucestershire, offering piano tuition, master classes and courses in interpretation. During this period, when her busy life allowed, she would attend Cheltenham Study Society meetings, her presence always imbuing those Thursday evenings with a quiet, Sattvic wisdom.

1933 2013

A London friend, Angela Parsons, writes: Alison was a person of great sensibility and a true musician by nature. From an early age she knew she wanted to play the piano, and despite initial family opposition began studies at the Royal Academy. This drive remained a constant focus in her life. At a later stage, however, her work was interrupted by the need to care for her companion who was suffering from a motor neurone disease. Several years later, after his death, she resumed work on the piano and would regularly travel long distances to receive lessons from a music teacher who sympathised with her aims and encouraged her towards performance again. She also attended several summer courses with him in France, which she hugely enjoyed. A serious heart condition, diagnosed in 2011, did not deter her from continued focus on her work, always the priority. This was a productive and happy time in her life, sadly brought to an end with her death this August. We at Colet were fortunate enough to hear her playing her beloved Beethoven Piano Sonata Op.109 at the end of the Open Sunday meeting this last June. In this performance one was struck by the unusually powerful tenderness of her left-hand playing an attribute not shared by many male pianists so reminiscent of that past great exponent of this work, Myra Hess.

29

The Still Point and the Canvas

Sometimes painting seems like a manifests a desire to paint: putting out application of paint, a fever metaphor for creation. The idea comes from the unknown still point and the colours, taking up the brush, painted it? Where did it come from? of

creativity... the nished work. Who centred painting where the turbulent, from the equation and the deeper unmoving centre is left? Am I in form, time and space connected in some way recording with one pair of its many hands a few snapshots of the rapidly to this centre? Am I its eyes and ears, turning world? Will the love and joy I experience in the doing shine through beauty? Painting from the still point is a with the spirit of truth truth and falling out of time, a coming into the Is there a difference between this

small self-concerned me is removed

Now of presence. It is usually a physical

tiredness that brings me back into the nothing to remember, there is just the act of creation and somehow all that paint the thing that moved me. need to forget.

world, to find that time passed unremarked but in Presence there is got onto the canvas and looks a little like forgetting of oneself and ones ability It is a and skills; it is a forgetting even of the
Caroline Hope

Heironym ous Bosch Ascent of the Blessed. Circa 1490 and circa 1516 Palazzo Grim ani, Venice Source: Wikicom m ons

BOOK REVIEWS
Courtesy of the Scientific & Medical Network Review
running commentary in your head, much of which is often painful. Then the meditation for you is finding the inner refuge through the silence of speech. What you do is sit down and balance, or if its at night then lie silently on your back, Focus your attention and listen in the silence. If your voices are persistent, simply allow the voices and feel the space and the silence around them, instead of listening to them and trying to negotiate with them. Feel the silence in and around the voices rather than trying to find the silence in the absence of voices. You find the silence within the noise, begin to hear the silence. It is there. It has always been there. As you are neither rejecting your inner voices nor inviting them, they slowly diminish as they are not being reinforced. Let the silence expand, listening all the while. After ten minutes you will be secure in your second refuge. And if at night you may fall into a dreamless sleep. The third method is finding inner refuge through the spaciousness of mind. For me, this is a wonderful, calming meditation. Start as before, sitting quietly and balanced, at rest. As before, draw your attention inside, not to the body, not to the voices, but to the mind itself. Instead of feeling stillness or silence, try to feel the spaciousness, the nature of mind is very spacious andthe nature of mind is described as clear and luminous. You can feel space around and within the sense of not knowing. You recognise the light within that darkness. As the space expands, the mind stops fretting over what it doesnt know and who you are and when you enter the luminous mind the mind becomes conscious of its own state and you feel an incredible protection. Just stay there. So try those three doors to your inner refuge. He calls these three methods pills, and suggests that we may need to take one three times a day. The three refuges, the body of emptiness, the body of light and the body of bliss, are your three tasks to keep yourself balanced and creative. The book goes on to describe how to deal with the pain body, how to kill the ego rather than be dominated by it. He points out The notion of pain body, pain speech and the pain mind the whole existence of your personality and characteristics is caused by not knowing your true self. His methods in this book will lead you to experience this bliss and find in times of disturbance a true inner refuge. The final chapters are devoted to the union as great bliss. Union in this context refers to openness and the awareness of openness. Even though short this book is a practical manual for living. All you need to do is practise the methods.
Peter Fenwick

AWAKENING THE LUMINOUS MIND Tibetan Meditation for Inner Peace and Joy (CD included) Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Hay House, 2012.
ISBN 978-1-4019-3761-4 Tenzin is the founder and spiritual director of Ligmincha Institute, a non-prot organisation dedicated to preserving the ancient teachings of Tibet and Zhang Zhung. His book is a practical description of a number of methods of meditation. I have been meditating now since 1967 and have tried a number of techniques while pursuing my seekers path. The meditations in this book, although similar to all meditations, are fresh and invigorating and worthy of practice. He has a clear concept of the pain body and both its emotional and physical genesis and enhancement, and the difficulties that arise by focusing on the pain body rather than using the meditation techniques to find a secure place within yourself where you can rest. This special area he calls the refuge and his meditation techniques are designed to take you to the refuge. He stresses often in his book how our natural mind is pure and perfected, giving rise spontaneously to positive qualities such as love, joy, compassion and equanimity. He adds We do not need directly to cultivate these positive qualities, nor to produce them through effort, because they naturally arise. He goes on That is why recognising the natural mind is the inner refuge and is the purpose of the meditation practice in this book. He points out that there are three main doors to the refuge; through stillness, silence of speech, and spaciousness of mind. So how does one find the inner refuge through stillness of the body? He emphasises that these meditations are useful not only for when your life is going well but more importantly, for when you are disturbed. First, dont move your body. Let it settle. Allow your pain to breathe. Second, dont feed your body negative attention or worry. It is important to draw the right kind of attention to the body. Become still and focus your attention upon stillness. Thats your door. Go deeper towards this stillness. You will come to a space of spaciousness that you experience as indestructible. It is permanent, it will hold you for ever. This is a very effective meditation for when the mind is tumultuous or when you cant settle to anything. Refuge through stillness is your answer. Do you remember those terrible days, or more important, those terrible nights when your mind wont shut up and despite whatever you do there is a prolonged

31

THE DREAM OF THE COSMOS Anne Baring Archive Publishing, 2013,

ISBN 978-1-906289-23-2 Twenty years in the making and distilling a lifetime of experience and reading, Anne Barings magnum opus is one of the most important books of the decade brilliant, profound, passionate, magisterial in its scope. Elsewhere in these pages is my review of Al Gores book on the future, to which this study provides a wonderful complement in terms of depth and history, articulating a feminine and spiritual outlook on the crisis of our time in its many dimensions - spiritual, psychological, ecological, social, political and economic. Needless to say, these are all interlinked at the level of worldview and reect much deeper patterns than most people are aware of. Anne draws on her own extensive background as a historian of culture and healer of the psyche to convey an extraordinary synthesis of essential ideas. These are accompanied by her husband Robin Barings beautiful images. A diagram on page 488 outlines the scheme of the book, beginning with the lunar phase of original participation and identity with the Great Mother. This is followed by the advent of solar mythology bringing separation of mind and soul as well as of mind and nature. The Cosmos, God and the world are objectified. She called the third phase stellar, bringing the sacred marriage and conscious participation in an ensouled cosmos. The book is then structured into six parts: the beginning of Annes quest, the lunar era of the original participation, the dissociated psyche and the pathology of separation and loss, recovering the connection to the soul, a new vision of reality, and transformation leading to final participation (a phrase from Owen Barfield). There are two interludes about the significance of the Sleeping Beauty as a fairy tale for our time, and the Way of the Tao as a feminine symbol. Anne writes lyrically about her early life, especially visits to her grandmothers house in the south of France and her discovery of Moorish Spain, Italy and India. The reader comes to understand the trajectory of the journey her life has taken and her passion to rediscover the ancient image of the soul as an all-embracing cosmic web of life in which we live, move and have our being. At the age of 11, she had a life changing experience in which another order of reality broke into the physical and set her off on her quest, on which her mother had already embarked. What she calls her awakening dream was the most awesome of her life, a vision of the goddess as Anima Mundi with an immense revolving wheel at the centre of her abdomen. Anne notices that she also has such a wheel, but that it is

not centred. The figure indicates that her task is to centre that wheel. It is a wonderful image and so representative of personal and cultural imbalance. The dream represents an important step in her quest leading to the philosophy and psychology of Carl Jung, who was undoubtedly one of the most significant thinkers of the 20th century, but too profound and threatening to be included in university psychology courses. Twenty years ago, Anne published The Myth of the Goddess with Jules Cashford in which they explored the implications of our cultural separation from nature and the goddess. This present book builds on their findings and her subsequent exploration of the Divine Feminine. A recurrent and central theme is the oneness of life and energy, but the rational mind can only see separation and thinks itself superior to the unconscious and the instinctual. In a chapter on the tree of life, Anne explores the significance of the Shekinah as a symbol of divine immanence that is also named womb, palace, enclosure, fountain, apple orchard and mystical Garden of Eden. Further imagery emerges in Gnosticism and the Holy Spirit as Presence. The image of the Great Mother implies a sense of participation in a Sacred Cosmic Order, which Anne explores extensively across a number of cultures, explaining the deep symbolism of the phases of the moon in terms of death and rebirth. She identifies a number of key themes of lunar mythology that are transmitted to later cultures in terms of the feminine qualities relationships and connection, including the shamanic vision of kinship with all creation. She shows how this sense was lost in Greek culture between Parmenides and Plato, also referring to the seminal work of Iain McGilchrist, which will be familiar to many readers. (The Master and His Emissary. Yale, 2009) The next part explains the advent of the solar era leading to a separation from nature and the battle between good and evil, the archetype of which is very much still with us. The solar myth refers to a cosmic battle between

32

light and darkness that was to have a profound political impact in the idea of the holy war and the formation of a warrior class associated with a quest for power and omnipotence; also with the development of utopian ideologies and their negative projection of evil on the other. The Great Mother gives way to the Great Father: good is identified with spirit, light, order and the rational mind, while the feminine aspect of life is frequently identified with evil in terms of nature, darkness, chaos and the body (p. 122). This polarisation continues into our own time and is reflected in the Christian myth of the Fall and its associated doctrine of original sin, to which Anne devotes a separate chapter. The literal interpretation of this myth bequeathed to generations of Christians a legacy of sexual guilt, misogyny and fear of Gods anger, the indications of which are examined in great detail through the writings of church fathers, especially St Augustine of Hippo. The obsession with sexuality sin and guilt is still with us. Other scholars have interpreted the story of Adam and Eve as the birth of self-awareness and the consequent loss of an unconscious participatory state, while the Celtic priest Pelagius provided a much more humane theology. In her work as a therapist, Anne came to understand the harm inflicted by a deep sense of self-rejection. The next chapter examines the history of misogyny and the effects of the oppression of women throughout history. Even in our own day, women are still being raped, trafficked and brutalised by domestic abuse, especially in war zones. Anne expresses her deep outrage on behalf of women to this history of oppression, which makes especially sobering reading for men. Within the Christian tradition, the three figures of Eve, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene carry different archetypes, and many readers will be familiar with recent reinterpretations of the role of Mary Magdalene. Eve stands for the contamination of original sin leading men to regard themselves as superior and women as defective. Anne examines episodes such as the witch trials and the continuing oppression of women in Muslim societies, concluding that the millennialong oppression of women is unfinished, with men still trying to exert patriarchal control. Current Western culture is based on a one-eyed rational consciousness already criticised by Blake in the 18th century. Modern science embraces a secular materialist philosophy with no vertical axis, but this view is being undermined in some quarters by a new science of consciousness and an understanding of how the brain has evolved. A different worldview is emerging, which is explored later in the book: there has been a resurgence of the feminine and a corresponding awakening of the soul with its emphasis on care, connection and feeling values. We are developing a sense of relationship with the Earth, as

reflected in environmentalism, holistic science and the Gaia hypothesis demonstrating the interconnectedness of life. The role of women is being gradually affirmed, and the feminine challenges us to develop compassion for life on Earth, to meet the deepest needs of the human heart and to relinquish damaging beliefs and patterns of behaviour. Carl Jung played a pioneering role in this process of rediscovering the soul with his profound exploration of alchemy. He was not afraid to plumb the depths of his own psyche and uncover collective patterns of which we must become more aware. He pointed out the dangers of onesidedness, seeking power and supremacy over others and projecting evil outwards - his work on the shadow could not be more important and it is essential that this should be widely understood in our culture, especially by politicians. As it is, only those familiar with Jungs work are aware of its profound implications. Instinct and the shadow, represented by the Dragon, cannot be conquered, because it is the creative power of life itself. One of our grave dangers, as also pointed out by Joseph Chilton Pearce, is the predominance of survival instincts activated by the reptilian brain and the consequent division between predator and prey. This is projected on a large scale with our development of evermore sophisticated forms of weaponry and destruction, rendered all the more lethal by pressures to conform to and obey authority. This malignant aggression is also marketed as entertainment in terms of sadism and violence, to which we expose our young people what Anne appropriately calls vicarious visual terrorism, which many defend in terms of freedom of expression. She rightly maintains that the real issue is the creation and protection of a civilised society. The shadow is equally present in terms of religious atrocities and politically endemic militarism to which science has also become beholden. She writes a truly searing chapter on war as the rape of the soul with its archaic roots in the reptilian and mammalian brains. We do not often reflect on the implications of nuclear and chemical (and now electromagnetic) weapons, which are simply an outrage against the sanctity of life and a fundamental betrayal of our humanity. Militarism and the arms trade continue to drive the world economy, at huge opportunity cost to other humanitarian and environmental budgets. The challenge here is that no pattern of behaviour is more resistant to change than the survival instincts that are triggered by fear. Moreover, the mass of humanity continues to follow outdated social customs and religious beliefs, so new leaders will have to be highly advanced in their thinking and genuinely grounded in the oneness of life. The next part articulates a new vision of reality as indicated by emerging sciences and new understandings

33

Dervish Diary
of consciousness as the ground of being. Anne brings together the findings of physics and biology with parallel metaphors in spiritual traditions - holographic thinking with the net of Indra. Sacred places such as Chartres with its rose windows reflect a multilayered understanding of reality. Reconnecting with the soul also entails overcoming the split between mind and body and respecting the role of instinct and the perceptions of the heart. Fundamental to this new vision is a new image of God, to which Anne devotes a whole chapter. Contemporary spiritual awakening arises from a direct connection with a transcendent dimension involving the transformation or illumination of consciousness rather than redemption through faith. The influence of the East has given us a different image of spirit along with an understanding of karma and reincarnation. In addition, Nature is now being understood in terms of theophany as in Celtic Christianity, opening up the possibility of healing the split between spirit and Nature. The final part explains stellar consciousness, taking the reader through the transmutational process of alchemy, rediscovered in the 20th century by Jung. Anne elaborates on the principal themes and processes that are also reflected in many myths. This represents a return journey to the unseen dimension that attunes our awareness to a hidden order of reality. She then the marshals the evidence for the survival of the soul beyond death, deriving from this material an understanding of our three bodies and the kinds of world that we will enter after having made our own transition. Reflecting the profound insights of this research, the last chapter explains how Light and Love are the pulse of the cosmos, as all mystics such as Ruysbroeck and Eckhart have maintained. Anne also explains how her book has been written with love: love of life, love of beauty, love of family and friends, love of humanity. She finishes with a vision of humanity aligning to the evolutionary intention of the cosmos and no longer driven by the quest for power, conquest and control and the appropriation of the Earths resources for the benefit of the few. In doing so, she believes, our minds will serve the deepest longings of our heart, the deepest wisdom of our soul. This is a profound message of hope and renewal calling forth the feminine principle of care, compassion and connection, principles that we can all choose to embody and articulate to serve as midwives of a new culture. The book is an absolute tour de force and the crowning achievement of a life well lived in the service of the inner life.
David Lorim er

First Friday of the month: Open Mukabeles at 7.45 pm. Before the Mukabele, Kim Richardson holds a Rumi poetry group from 6.30-7.30 pm. Bring a poem to share. All are welcome. Guests must please sign the Visitors book in the Hall. 2nd & 4th Fridays: Turning Practices at 7.45 pm. Learn to do the slow turning. Bring a dish for a shared pot-luck supper. 2nd, 3rd, 4th Fridays: Mevlevi Poetry and singing of illahi with Richard Stevens. 6.15-7.45 pm. All Tuesdays: Mathnawi Study Groups: Farsi group 4.00-6.30. (contact Ali Koorush on 07401 704843) English analysis 6.30-8.00. (contact Richard Stevens on 07976 377697) Most Sundays: Drumming and music 6.30-9.00 pm. Drums provided, everyone welcome. Bring food to share. Please ring Nihat Tsolak to confirm on 07944 489527.

New Music Classes with Amir Hussein

From the 1st of Nov 2013, there will be a structured Ney and Daf class every other Friday from 630pm to 8pm. Alternating Fridays, there will be music practice but without instruction. The classes are FREE but donations are warmly received. Please contact Amir at sam.rume@gmail.com for more information

Movements to Music
Classes take place at Colet House on Mondays at 8.00pm and at Bath, Somerset, on Sundays at 7.30pm. Please let us know in advance if you are unable to attend a class. Contact: please call 07986 903767.

THE OFFICE IS OPEN MONDAYFRIDAY 11.00 am5.30 pm Administrators: Lisa Hamling & Judith Aston

T HE S TUDY S OCIETY
M ANAGEMENT C OMMITTEE
2013 2014
Dr Peter Fenwick Martin Redfern Richard Larcombe Stephen Skillman Norman Alderton Barbara Herbin Anthony Kedros Philip Marvin Jennifer Wood
Dr Peter Fenwick Richard Larcombe Norman Alderton Gerald Beckwith Lucy Cobb Barbara Herbin Philip Jacobs Sylvia Leiserach Kim Richardson Wendy Roles

W EEKLY A CTIVITIES at Colet House

M ONDAY M EETINGS
Chanting Meditation Meeting (Dr Roles Room) E Group (Blue Room) Movements to Music 6.00 6.30 7.00 6.45 8.00 9.30 pm pm pm pm pm

(Chair & Trustee) (Trustee) (Secretary) (Treasurer) Gerald Beckwith Ghazale Jamsheed Sylvia Leiserach Wendy Roles

UNITY GROUP
(Chair) (Secretary) Jenny Beal Kate Brass Val Goss Clive Hicks Jonathan Leiserach Paul Maiteny Martin Robinson Jennifer Wood

T UESDAY L UNCHTIME G ROUP Meeting 1.00 2.00 pm 2.00 pm Meditation Meeting (Blue Room) (last Tuesday of the month only) W EDNESDAY G ROUPS
2.00 pm C Group (Dr Roles Room) David Nesbit Work Party 6.30 9.00 pm Yoga Class with Marcel Bird 7.00 8.15 pm

H OUSE C OMMITTEE
Gerald Beckwith (Chair) Michael Buxton Paul Hayes Maciej Malinowski William Milne Angela Peiper Jude Singleton Dates of all committee meetings can be obtained from the Office. Minutes of meetings are available for members to read in the Library and on the Societys website.

T HURSDAY G ROUPS
Chi Gung (Qigong) 6.30pm A Group (Blue Room) Clive Hicks (Meditation 7.30) 8.00 pm B Group (Dr Roles Room) Angela Parsons
(Meditation at 7.45 pm)

8.15 pm

F RIDAY T URNING & M UKABELES

(See the Dervish Diary, opposite, for full details) Turning Practices 7.45 pm 7.45 pm Mukabeles Robing, & to be in seats

OPEN SUNDAY MEETING

2 March 2014 10.30 am RUTH WHITE & NARAIN ISHAYA
Sweet are the uses of adversity
Every cloud has a silver lining: Often we are so focused on what we want to happen we miss the lessons and blessings found in what is happening. Our resistance causes us stress and suffering. Yet every apparent holdup or disadvantage can show us incredible amounts about ourselves, our judgements, habits and reactions. Seen this way, the whole universe becomes our teacher, a constant guide to letting go of limitation and stepping into greater happiness and stability.

S UNDAY

(usually rst of each month)

Non-Duality Workshop (followed by shared lunch) Norman Alderton 10.30am12.30pm

MONDAY

EVENINGS AT

COLET HOUSE

THE FIRST & LAST MONDAY MEETINGS OF TERM are led by Dr Peter Fenwick. These meetings are preceded at 6.30pm by a coming-together in halfan-hour of Stillness and Meditation. EVERYONE who comes to Colet House is welcome whether members, meditators, or not.

MEDITATION
Anyone who would like to be introduced to the Meditation, please call the Office so that it may be arranged.

Initiation dates are on the diary page.

All other Mondays of term there will be chanting and meditation open to all meditators and associate members, followed by meetings in Dr Roles room for which there are no papers. Those attending are invited, in turn, to bring quotations and themes they would like the Monday group to work with.

Tel: 020 8748 9338

Fax: 020 8563 0551

Email: office@studysociety.org

Website: www.studysociety.org

Caretaker: Maciej Malinowski. Tel: 020 8741 9182

COLET HOUSE DIARY

Friday Monday Friday Monday 4 January 6 January 11 January 13 January 6.30pm 7.45pm 11.00am 7.45pm 6.00pm 6.30pm 7.00pm 8.00pm Tuesday 14 January 1.00pm 4.00 6.00pm 6.30 8.30pm Wednesday 13 January Thursday Friday Monday Friday Monday Friday Sunday Monday Friday Monday Monday Friday Sunday Monday Sunday Monday Friday Sunday Monday Monday Friday Sunday Monday Monday Friday Sunday Monday Thursday Friday Monday 16 January 17 January 20 January 6.45pm 24 January 28 January 1 February 2 February 3 February 7 February 10 February 17 February 21 February 23 February 24 February 2 March 3 March 7 March 9 March 10 March 17 March 21 March 23 March 24 March 31 March 4 April 6 April 7 April 10 April 11 April 28 April 7.45pm 11.00am 6.30pm 7.45pm 10.30am 7.45pm 11.00am 7.45pm 10.30am 7.45pm 6.30pm 7.45pm 10.30am 6.00pm 7.45pm 7.45pm 7.00pm 6.30pm 8.00pm 7.45pm Sufi Poetry Guest Mukabele Office Opens Turning Practice Chanting

SPRING TERM 2014

STILLNESS AND MEDITATION TO START EACH TERM for EVERYONE Monday Meeting with Peter Fenwick Movements start Tuesday Lunchtime Group starts Mathnawi Study: Farsi Group Mathnawi Study: English Group Yoga class starts Nei Gung (Qi Gong) Starts A&B Group Meetings Start Mukabele As Usual E Group Starts Turning Practice As Usual Sufi Poetry Turning Practice Non-Duality Workshop As Usual GRADUATION MUKABELE As Usual As Usual Mukabele INITIATIONS As Usual OPEN SUNDAY Ruth White & Narain Ishaya Sweet are the Uses of Adversity House Closed Movements and E Group as usual Guest Mukabele Non-Duality Workshop As Usual As Usual Mukabele Annual General Meeting House closed Movements and E Group as usual As Usual Sufi Poetry Guest Mukabele Non-Duality Workshop Last Monday Meeting of Term with Peter Fenwick (Last Movements 8.00pm) Last Group Meetings Office closes OFFICE OPENS SUMMER TERM STARTS. All activities as usual

See inside back cover for full details of activities

THE STUDY SOCIETY, COLET HOUSE, 151 TALGARTH ROAD, LONDON W14 9DA
email: office@studysociety.org T ELEPHONE : 020 8748 9338 Website: www.studysociety.org