In 1968, Idries Shah published a book, Caravan of Dreams (The Octagon Press, London) for introducing the Sufi approach to higher human development in the West in English in a new way.  In that book, a Sufi Teaching Story, The Bees and the Hollow Tree, was presented.  Shah introduced that story as follows:

This is a favourite tale of Balkan dervishes.  It is attributed to Sayed Jafar (died 1598 in Ephesus) who was a successor of Ibrahim Gulshani of Cairo, who founded the Gulshani Order, a combination of the Four Paths of Sufism.  He died in 1553.

     Jafar is popularly believed to have ‘visited the stars’, as a sort of precursor to today’s spacemen, in a luminous chariot without perceptible motive-power.  The Gulshanis handed back their metaphysical endowment ‘in a brass, silver and copper casket’ to the Azamia (‘Greater’) Brethren in the seventeenth century, retaining, it is said, only the powers of obtaining interviews with certain historical figures long dead.

Jafar was clearly an Ultraterrestrial Sufi who engaged in advanced Extraterrestrial Contact.  He was doing something of far greater importance than being a “precursor to today’s spacemen”, as Shah puts it.  In fact, this statement of Shah is nothing less than a misleading cover-up of the entire issue of global, universal and cosmic perspectives on higher human development.  Jafar was operating on a much higher level than a stupid American astronaut.  Having brought up the subject of Sufi travelers to the stars, why did Shah spend the rest of his career covering up the subject rather than elucidating it?  One obvious reason would be that he would not want the superficial Western seekers identifying the evolutionary processes and principles of the Sufi Way with things like the silly pseudo-channeled Ramtha as found in the Judi Pope Koteen book, UFOs and the Nature of Reality, which tries to make an Ultraterrestrial (Ramtha) sound like a New Age idiot.  Yet, even there, the idea of learning-by-telepathy parallels the Sufi approach to transmission and learning.  Once we open the inner door to higher human contact and communion, why should it be limited to advanced Sufis on Earth?  Such inner contact and communion is indeed possible with advanced Beings beyond Earth, which could be potentially more valuable than what advanced Sufis of Earthbound disposition have to offer.  Shah and his assistants, obsessed with recruiting Westerners to their authoritarian and exclusive Eastern tradition, obviously cannot afford to open the whole can of cosmic worms that began with Sayed Jafar Gulshani.

It is also pertinent that the Ancient Greek philosopher, Parmenides, went up in a “luminous chariot” into contact with a golden-haired Extraterrestrial Woman most probably from the Pleiades, who made it clear to Parmenides how the people of the Earth live in sheer ignorance in belief-systems of various cultures and religions that distort Truth and inhibit human development.  Like Sayed Jafar Gulshani, Parmenides was also an Ultraterrestrial person who attempted to transmit a cosmic perspective to his fellow men of Earth.  Notice also the peculiar parallel of Shams-i-Tabriz and Jelel ud-Din Rumi’s Whirling Dervish approach with what happened to Whitley Strieber on Sirius B.  And further notice that the fifty-thousand years old sage, Agastya Muni, resident every fifty years on the mountain, Agastya Malai, in South India, and Sadguru to endless generations of miraculous South Indian Siddhayogis, is also an advanced Extraterrestrial of the Sirius B type.

The Earthbound Sufi authorities of the old Eastern branches and the new Western affiliates obviously cannot handle the Big Picture of human development on the total Earth or in the Galaxy and beyond.  Put all this beside the societal confrontation being artificially created and maintained by the black Western governments between Western societies and resident Muslims, we have to ask how either Western seekers or Eastern purveyors of the Sufi Way are going to come to grips with the mutual environments in regard to the Way.  As a Western seeker, for instance, one can perform a pilgrimage to developmental locations in India where Siddhayoga is still promoted, but Sufi Centers in the Middle East are too dangerous for Western seekers to travel to or be involved with on either end of the stick.

What we do notice lately in regard to the Sufi Way is that it is not only increasingly debilitated in the East and the West, but that the superficial gossipy Sufi Web forums are adding to the learning disabilities of potential seekers, much as described in the Idries Shah books.  Therefore, the excellent and indispensable psychological insights of advanced Sufis cannot adequately unfold in the present social atmosphere of the anti-Islamic West and the anti-Western East.

We must all revisit the most basic evolutionary questions:  How is a human being without local cultural prejudice and bio-mechanical conditioning on Earth (as a planet in a Galaxy) to undertake the development of higher experiences and faculties on the road to awakening within Divine Superconsciousness?  Where and with Whom at what Time are such developments and divine realizations to be carried out?  Who is truly divinely realized, complete and able to teach and transmit appropriately in a global and cosmic perspective?

The retrieval of urgently important Sufi factors from within the present horrible situation of the Sufi Way on the disintegrating planet Earth is not easy because those who should be doing it right do not want to do it right because of their own stupidity, vanity and spiritual incompetence, their lack of Divine Self-realization and Cosmic Perspective.

What really happened to the Gulshani Order is not within the cognitive boundaries of Idries Shah and his uptight band of partially developed Sufi spiritual authorities.  A much greater awakening among leading Sufis has to take place if there is to be a cosmic retrieval for the Sufi Way for the future of mankind.

Because I was indeed Baba Farid Chisti two lifetimes ago, my Qalb, Heart, of spiritual devotion, remains essentially Chisti, though only subliminally Muslim.  The Essence of Love lives on eternally.  That is why I find the current ugliness and societal warfare between the West and the Islamic East rather heart-breaking.  My higher emotional Heart is Chisti, so I am not welcome in the East or the West!  My higher thinking Ruh, Spirit, is that of Zen Master Po Chang (another past life) so again I am not welcome in America or China.  And Sufi followers do not like Zen Masters, just as Zen followers do not like Sufi Masters.  Since I am both a Sufi Master and a Zen Master with activated Heart and Spirit or what the Tibetans call Bodhichitta, I am not understood or accepted much anywhere for all the wrong reasons.  Exclusive spiritual authorities and their followers do not like composite Masters or Ultraterrestrials.  Who really wants to comprehend what has really happened with people like myself, Jafar Gulshani or Parmenides?  Gurdjieff, trained by advanced Sufis, wrote his autobiographical novel, Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson, from the perspective of an extraterrestrial being, which is precisely what makes him a genuine Sarmouni.

The Ultraterrestrial Sarmoun Way is not an exclusive traditional club for playing spiritual authority games with hapless Western seekers.  To enter into all this, raise the level of your awareness.  If you cling to your conditioning or try to convert to some alternative conditioning, you are missing the point completely.  If, on the other hand, you try to bypass the whole developmental challenge by sinking into the Krishnamurti cop-out, you are worse than stupid.

Extraterrestrial behind-the-scenes connections with miraculous higher human development are not going to go away just because the distorted spiritual collectives on Earth cannot process the information.  Sooner or later, increasing numbers of spiritual aspirants will come to understand that willful ignorance through exclusive concentration on Idries Shah (or anyone else) inhibits significant higher developments rather than fostering them, for he himself most definitely lacked significant higher developments, including Divine Self-realization.  He did have some notable higher powers, but that is itself somewhat distractive, just as it is with other cult leaders like Swami Muktananda and Carlos Castaneda.  Knowing who or what to concentrate on when is the real issue in all this.  The ability to concentrate is beyond social and cultural identification and prejudice.

May the Sufi Way remain haunted by the life and work of the Extraterrestrial Contactee Sufi, Sayed Jafar Gulshani.