Recent sociopolitical events where millions of people are rioting in Muslim countries against the publications of anti-Islamic cartoons in European newspapers are serving to heighten the tension between Non-Muslim Western Sufis and Eastern Muslim Sufis.  In the West it is increasingly dangerous to be in any way affiliated with Islam; in the East it is increasingly dangerous to be in any way affiliated with Technological Secular Atheism or Agnosticism of the West.

The Sarmoun Solution is becoming more and more imperative for both Western and Eastern Sufis.  The issues are not going to go away!  But few contemporary seekers of the Sufi Way in the West or the East want to comprehend what is at stake.  Why is this?  Because their hereditary, cultural and social conditioning will not allow them to have the necessary level of awakening of higher intelligence and consciousness.

A “Clash of Cultures” is being deliberately fomented by Western political leaders of the New World Order.  They arrange pseudo-Islamic acts of self-terrorism in their own countries in order to justify excessive surveillance and police state controls of an anti-democratic nature against their own peoples; and this of course has to do with trying to control oil supplies and set up a black-hearted world government.  The ignorant and emotionally upset Muslim peoples throughout the Muslim countries are aware of these real conspiracies and are justifiably upset and feel violently helpless.  There is therefore a vicious reinforcing collective causal feedback loop between the Western Secular Powers and the Eastern Islamic Societal Forces.

What, then, is a Sufi, whether of the West or the East, non-Muslim or Muslim, supposed to do to adjust to these anti-Sufic developments in the West and the East?  As one who respects Islam and feels a certain inspiration in the Heart from it, I cannot function but stealthily in the Western countries out of danger of being branded a “supporter of terrorists”.  As one who respects Universality of Spirituality and supportive Cognitive Sciences and Deconstructive Philosophy, I cannot function but stealthily in the Eastern Islamic countries out of danger of being branded as a “C.I.A. spy” or “hater-of-Islam”.  As a Sufi, I am not welcome or socially adjusted in the West or the East.  In such conditions, it can be very discouraging to be a Sarmoun Sufi.

A further complication of all this is that no matter how advanced my Sufi realization may be, neither the Western Islamicized  “Sufis” nor the Eastern Islamic “Sufis” will listen to the necessary Spiritual Truth that comes through me and those like me.  This is because we are deemed “inauthentic” if we did not personally arise in Central Asia and have an hereditary or cultural conditioning as did someone like Idries Shah.  This inability of seekers to distinguish between the Universal Cosmic Self and the Regional Social Self is an abject ignorance and a widespread evolutionary catastrophe on the planet Earth.  And it is an old problem, as A. Reza Arasteh brought out in his wonderful book, Rumi the Persian, (SH. Muhammad Ashraf publishers, 1965).  Arasteh, a Sarmouni in essence, shows the meanings of the Sarmoun Master, Shams-i-Tabriz, liberating Jalal Al-Din Rumi, his disciple, from cognitive imprisonment within Islam.

The same issue is studied in ancient Chinese Zen Buddhism in the five levels of the interface of Host and Guest in the Ts’ao Tung Sect (Soto Zen in Japan) as excellently commented on by Charles Luk in his book, Ch’an And Zen Teaching: Series Two (Rider and Company, 1961).

Of course, students of Idries Shah’s Western Naqshbandi Order of exclusive traditionalism are not supposed to take these cross-disciplinary studies seriously, even though they are absolutely crucial, never having been more needed in a world of “McWorld Versus Jihad” as one Western scholar put it.

If a Western seeker aspires to higher human development and union with the Divine, there are irreplaceable elements he or she will need from the Sufi Way, but this should not become the foolish detour of a conversion to Islam.  If an Eastern Muslim seeker aspires to higher human development and union with the Divine, he or she will need to embrace the Sufi Way and be extremely cautious and stealthy in the necessary studies of Zen, Yoga and Theosophy to fill-in the Knowledge blanks that are missing in the usual Sufi formulations.

Currently, Western Sufism is a Brain without a Heart, and Eastern Sufism is a Heart without a Brain.  This reflects the unbalanced conditionings of intellect and emotion in the collective societies of the modern brain-in-a-jar European and the brainless emotional Muslim.  Instead of being mutually corrective through understanding, they are in mutual conflict through misunderstanding like two split races of runaway biological robots per Gurdjieff, the Armenian non-Muslim Sufi.

My authenticity as a Sufi is by Self-realization and Real Truth, not by Eastern conditioning.  I will never convert to exclusive Islam or the exclusive Naqshbandi Order.  At the same time, I will always be inspired by both Islam and the teaching stories of all Sufi Orders, which especially includes the Chisti Order of my previous incarnation as Baba Farid Chisti, for that life and personality will always be part of my Soul and essentially deathless.  Of course, outer Sufi teachings, encrusted in Islamic dogma, do not admit recognizable reincarnation of their own teaching Masters.  For that, we have to turn to the Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist tradition.  But then they would not recognize that I was the yogi Milarepa because I did not take up another Tibetan body as did Chögyam Trungpa, and they would hate the idea of recognizing me as Baba Farid Chisti.  Ignorant conditioning in any regional culture on this shallow and savage planet Earth is incapable of spiritual perception of anyone by anyone with few exceptions.  That is how things stand.  Thus when I simply tell it how it is, I am subjected to ridicule and disagreement from the spiritually blind.  Such behavior does not negate my present spiritual evolutionary function behind-the-scenes on this planet, but it certainly helps the would-be Sufis block their own activation of their subtle organs of spiritual perception.  It has always been pre-requisite to the Sufi Way to question one’s assumptions and evaluations, but those who should know better are not doing that.

Heedless Western “Sufis” who continue to stupidly identify themselves with Islam are in for a rough ride.  As long as they equate spiritual authority and authenticity with an Eastern Islamic cultural conditioning, they will remain stunted in their actual development and will in no way approach to mergence with the Divine level of Being, which is Universal, Cosmic and Transcultural Self-Awakening, Atma-Bodha.

Final Note:

Any reader of this article who would like to develop as a Sarmouni rather than as a prejudiced and self-destructive Islamic “Sufi”, should not only thoroughly study in depth the two books by A. Reza Arasteh and Charles Luk pointed out in this article, but also the book of the German Existential Philosopher, Martin Heidegger, called “Being and Time” which studies and analyzes the interface of the inauthentic and irresolute They-self with the authentic and resolute Self.  This is required study, even though it is not an ostensible “Sufi” book.  Genuine Sufis will of course understand this kind of requirement, but the superficialist emotional identifiers will not.

It is also not the only pre-requisite for learning from my presence at this time.  Also required are the deep study of the Ontology transmitted by the people from the planet Ummo in the book of Antonio Ribera, UFO Contact From Planet Ummo (UFO Photo Archives, 1985) and the Walter Truet Anderson book, Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be (Harper and Row, 1990).  These also are not ostensibly “Sufi”, but they are indispensable to a Sarmouni Sufic self-education toward the living future and the organic development of the Universe of which Earth humanity is a tiny but meaningful part.

If you will truly educate yourself instead of merely engaging in Sufi gossip on the Web, you might have a chance for something unpopular but personally important.